


Arbitrary

by dogbite_propaganda



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Amputation, Angst, Animal Death, Blood and Injury, Blood and Violence, Cattle Prodding as a Form of Torture, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dog Fighting, Electricity, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Finger Amputation, Forced Feeding, Forced Feeding of Dog Food, Graphic Description, Hurt/Comfort, I Tried To Make Sure I Covered My Bases, M/M, Mind Games, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Tooth Removal, Torture, Use of Barbed Wire as a Restraint, Waterboarding, Waterboarding with Gasoline, Whump, barbed wire, please let me know if I missed something
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:42:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 23,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27813211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogbite_propaganda/pseuds/dogbite_propaganda
Summary: Few things were clear in that moment; only that he was much less dressed than he remembered being and that his body ached from laying on a graveled floor. Pushing himself up, he all but fell back on the concrete wall with a groan as he reached up to press his palms into his eyes in a feeble attempt to quell the nauseating headache behind them.The room was pitch black save for a small bit of white, florescent light that streamed in from beneath the door, only to be swallowed whole by the darkness within a few inches. It took him time but he eventually pulled himself to his feet and checked the door. Locked, naturally, but not through the doorknob. Based on what he could feel, he counted three separate deadbolts on it. The door itself felt cold, made of metal rather than wood. Whoever had him wanted him to stay put and without any of his stuff, he didn’t have much of a choice otherwise.
Relationships: Jack Rollins/Brock Rumlow
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	1. The Hungrier One Is

In the nine years he’d worked for HYDRA, Jack had become used to a flurry of things. One of which was being pushed outside of his comfort zone. Far outside of it, worlds away even. Something he didn’t know was possible was being pushed so far into his comfort zone that he somehow became uncomfortable in a whole new way. And yet, miraculously, HYDRA found out how to do just that. They always did. 

The cold was never something that Jack minded, in truth he favored it over other types of weather. Colorado winters were well known for how cold they got, often venturing deep into the negatives, but it was something Jack missed about the place ever since he’d moved away. Telluride was a small town, one where no one’s secrets stayed secret for long, but something about the place was perfect to him. The perfect amount of people, perfectly nestled in the mountains, with perfect weather year round and yes that meant the negative degree winters. But even Jack had his limits and as it turns out, the mountains of Sokovia were just that. 

They’d been on the mission for over a week. Remarkably enough, even HYDRA and their top notch operatives had trouble locating the bases of terrorist organizations, deploying STRIKE team Alpha before they’d actually hit their mark. Which left them sitting on their asses, waiting in a squalid safe house until proper coordinates were given with strict directions of undetected information retrieval. It should’ve been easy, really. If everyone did their jobs and did them well, the mission would go off without a hitch. But for once in their careers, perfection just wasn’t in the cards. The catastrophic misstep they took that kicked over the first domino? Brock’s cigarettes. 

It seemed like such a minute thing, something none of them should’ve had to worry about especially with such a quick fix just down the mountain and into town. But part of staying undetected meant not being seen, convenience stores included, which left Brock gnashing at the bit like a grizzly in a river full of salmon he just couldn’t catch. As it turns out, the Commander got extremely irritable after four days of no nicotine. Well, make that five with the blizzard that decided to state its claim on the mountain that their safehouse was oh so inconveniently resting on. Another night was guaranteed and with the way the weather looked, they’d be lucky if it was just one. 

Brock had been at Jack’s throat all day, already irritated with the situation as it is. This was such a low grade mission to him; one that Bravo or Charlie could’ve taken on without a problem, one that Alpha had no business messing their hands with. But there they were, slowly creeping into their eighth day in Sokovia’s own personal winter wasteland. Because of his predetermined malice toward the mission, the addition of running out of cigarettes four days in had him nit picking the whole team. He’d been doing it all week but today he was particularly spiteful about it, especially seeing as the whole thing went tits up pretty much as soon as they got there and the lot of them were spared no mercy from Brock’s wrath as soon as they finished unpacking the gear back at their dilapidated base. Jack tried to ignore it and let him get his tantrum over with but the bastard always had a way of getting under his skin. It was times like these where he had to remind himself there  _ was _ an actual reason he’d married the guy. 

Everyone got chewed out that night. According to Brock, Lomack took too long hacking into security cameras, which delayed their progress and put them on an impossibly stricter schedule. Barkley was slow to the draw which ended up getting Reed shot. Alternatively, Reed wasn’t keeping a good enough eye on the team’s collective six which was why he’d been shot in the first place. Keller was clumsy when bandaging the wound which left a trail of blood straight to their hidden escape vehicle and because of Decker’s “languor” starting up the car, —as if he somehow had control over the battery being finicky in the cold —the enemy was able to chase them through the mountains. 

“It’s a miracle your dumb asses are able to form a straight line.” Brock snapped, his anger clearly unhindered by his tangent. “And  _ you,” _

It took a few moments for Jack to realize he was the new object of Brock’s rage and at this, he couldn’t help but put up his guard. 

“You’re getting way too fucking comfortable commanding  _ my _ team.” He growled. Jack didn’t even try to keep himself from scoffing, seeing the tic in Brock’s jaw when he did. 

“I’m sorry, what the hell’re you talking about?” He asked, exhaustion weighing his voice down. It’d been a long day, no,  _ week. _ He was in no mood for Brock’s unwarranted criticism. 

“What, don’t you remember barkin’ out orders that explicitly went against my plan? Or is  _ your  _ head not screwed on right, either? Come on, Rollins, you’re half blind not half dumb.” He seethed with all the fury of a wet hen. This little fit was ridiculous. Jack knew it, the whole team did too, and Brock would ignore the embarrassment he’d feel about it later while convincing himself he was right just like he always did. This wasn’t something new, Brock was always hard to deal with when he was pissed. He’d been a hard ass like this since the day they met and in a way, it was one of the reasons Jack had fallen for him but in times like this, Brock was just down right insufferable and they all knew it. Usually he’d back down from the challenge, bow his head with a quiet  _ ‘Sorry, sir. Won’t happen again, sir.’ _ and Brock’s anger would either find a new target or would burn a little less bright. But after four days of dealing with the same shit, Jack’d had just about enough. All of this fuss over a couple of damn cigarettes. 

“Your plan was compromised. If we went along with it, we’d all be dead.” He said, allowing for a bit of bite to his words. It would’ve been better for all of them if he kept the snap out of his tone but what was the worst Brock could really do at that point? Throw a  _ bigger _ fit? Jack really just didn’t care anymore.

“That’s for  _ me _ to decide, Rollins. Not you. What gives you the right-” 

“The fuck am I here for then?” Jack cut him off, throwing his once crossed arm out in annoyance. “I’m not a damn decoration, Brock, I’m your second.” 

“You’re here because I wanted you here,” Brock growled low, a poison like led in his words. Jack took note of the past tense and he knew Brock was well aware of the way it stung. “So for once in your goddamn life, give me a reason to keep you around.”

Brock hissed his words, getting into Jack’s face in a way that Jack recognized as a challenge. One he didn’t want to commit to. So with a huff, he took a step back, re-crossed his arms, and pushed his back into the wall behind him with a bit more force than necessary. It was the last they’d spoken to each other that night and the only thing on Jack’s mind as he sat out on the rickety old porch to do his watch. He really didn’t want to go back inside, knew he wouldn’t be able to get to sleep anyway. He’d even taken Lomack’s place and stayed up into the early hours of the night, alone with his thoughts and the cries of the wind. 

The only thing that kept him company throughout had been a small, contained fire. It would crackle and pop from time to time, generating just enough noise to keep Jack sane through the endeavor. For a while, he was sure that it was the only other conscious life for miles. But at some point, he heard a disturbance in the wind. Either he was going crazy or he was actually hearing what sounded like footsteps and even, at times, the low thrum of a conversation through the eerie shrieks brought along by the storm. Something heavy sank in the pit of his belly, foreboding and uneasy. Part of him knew he should call for backup but another part of him didn’t want to risk waking the beast within the cabin. When it came between going inside or braving the unknown, Jack had chosen the latter. 

Making use of his heavy duty flashlight seemed like a fruitless effort, never able to see more than three or so feet in front of him at any given moment. Still, he kept his gun perched over his left arm per usual, light source in the corresponding hand as he navigated the immediate perimeter of the cabin. Close enough to still see the little flickering fire that had kept the loneliness at bay but far enough to make him yearn for the warmth. With the screeching of the wind in his ears, he could hardly hear the tremble of his own breath, let alone anything else and after fifteen unending minutes, Jack decided his hands were numb enough. It was on his venture back that he’d been caught off guard. He counted at least two voices but knew there had to be three or more bodies on him. By the time he had any sense left in him, he was on his stomach trying to crawl away from the grasp but there was nothing he could do. Just as he managed to pull his gun from his thigh holster, he could smell the chemically sweet scent of chloroform on the rag pressed over his mouth and nose. And knowing he wouldn’t be able to weasel his way out of this one, he fired three gunshots into the open air in his last few waking moments with the hope that his team would heed his warning. 

✩

A soft breeze brushed against his face, cooling the heating migraine that had stated its claim on the inside of his skull. His eyes were throbbing before he even had a chance to open them and his groggy mind did the best it could to collect bits and pieces of memories that didn’t quite sync up properly in his head. Few things were clear in that moment; only that he was much less dressed than he remembered being and that his body ached from laying on a graveled floor. Pushing himself up, he all but fell back on the concrete wall with a groan as he reached up to press his palms into his eyes in a feeble attempt to quell the nauseating headache behind them. 

The room was pitch black save for a small bit of white, florescent light that streamed in from beneath the door, only to be swallowed whole by the darkness within a few inches. It took him time but he eventually pulled himself to his feet and checked the door. Locked, naturally, but not through the doorknob. Based on what he could feel, he counted three separate deadbolts on it. The door itself felt cold, made of metal rather than wood. Whoever had him wanted him to stay put and without any of his stuff, he didn’t have much of a choice otherwise. 

Stripped down to gearless tact pants, his boots, and his undershirt, Jack could feel the cold seep through the thin, short sleeved fabric. Other than that, he was left with his dog tags that still hung on a chain around his neck and his wedding band, still on his ring finger. 

He would bet money he was still Sokovia but he wasn’t quite sure if he was shivering because of the cold or the chloroform. They’d been trained with that shit before, recovery time for HYDRA’s agents was supposed to be faster after they were “desensitized” but based on his recent shortcomings, Jack wasn’t really confident the “training” was of any use. He still felt just as shitty as the first time it’d happened to him, minus the vomiting. With no way out in sight, he knew he had to sit and wait for something to happen. No use breaking his ankle trying to bust down that steel door. 

It felt like it took hours for the headache to nullify, despite it likely only being thirty or so minutes. He was sure the lack of light and sound did wonders to help him. As his head cleared, he was able to process the situation better. He was almost certain he’d been picked up by that terrorist group they’d infiltrated, somehow tracked down despite said group being woefully unequipped to do so. Who else could it be, really? What he was doing there was an entirely different ordeal. There were a few things that could be happening, none of which were very pleasant to think about. 

The first thing that crossed his mind was that they would want information. Of course they would, there was no way they’d know that it was the “long dead” organization HYDRA fucking around with their plans. Jack knew he’d be pinned as American military, which was good because he could lie his way through it pretty easily so long as they gave him the option too. Maybe it was too early to judge but, leaving him in the room, in the dark, unattended made it feel like they could be using isolation as their method of choice. The idea was that after thirty days alone in the dark, it became more difficult for your target to process information. An increase in anxiety would hinder their decision making skills and the promise of information would be used as a bargaining chip for freedom. But, just like many other things, HYDRA accounted for this and Jack had the feeling that they were gravely underestimating how long he could sit by himself in the dark. 

The second thing was less likely, but still viable. Jack didn’t think that this group would be able to get the rest of STRIKE tagged and bagged like they did to him, especially after those warning shots. So, that meant Jack was probably the only one and they were trying to use him for ransom. It wouldn’t work, of course, HYDRA couldn’t give a shit less about him but, if they were under the assumption that they were working with the American military, then maybe they thought they had a fighting chance with it. 

And thirdly, the least likely of the options but one he thought of no less, was that this was some crude attempt at sensory deprivation. Nothing Jack hadn’t come into contact with before with HYDRA’s “resistance training,” but this? If it really  _ was  _ sensory deprivation then it was laughable, at best. He gave the group the benefit of the doubt. 

For six hours, Jack counted the minutes while he pressed his head into the cool concrete behind him. Based on the temperature, he figured they were underground and he wondered if he was in the same building that the team had infiltrated. He wondered if Brock would fight Pierce on leaving him behind and unable to forget their final exchange, he wondered if he cared at all. Jack fiddled with the ring on his finger. 

Before he could ponder much else, the lights in the room burst to life so quickly he was almost shocked the bulbs didn’t burst. Accompanying them was a loud, blaring siren that ignited an instant fire in Jack’s skull. Squeezing his eyes shut and leaning forward, Jack pushed his palms against his ears, keeping his head between his knees as he curled up into the wall. After a few torturous minutes, the siren stopped and he could barely hear the clicks of the locks on the door over the ringing in his head. And then the door was pushed open. 

Glancing up through watering eyes, Jack was able to make out the blurry outline of man. There was a plastic bag in his captor’s hand that he eyed warily, watching the man approach briefly to drop it in front of him before stepping back toward the door to call after his company. Jack made no move to retrieve the bag. 

There wasn’t much else in the room save for a vent in the middle of the ceiling and a hole in the floor in an adjacent corner. He grimaced, putting the thought of it aside for now as he pressed his back into his own corner. These bastards wouldn’t get the jump on him a second time. The aforementioned bastard was nothing like what Jack had expected. He was thin, almost gangly so, a few inches shorter than Jack with pale blonde hair and dark, black-looking eyes. From the look of him, Jack figured the man was in his late thirties and all around, he knew he could take him under normal circumstances. But he wasn’t dumb enough to rush a man with a gun shoved down the front of his jeans. 

The other one who entered looked almost identical and if Jack had to guess, he would say they were brothers. But where the first had longer, greasy shoulder length hair, the other had a short, military cut. Where the first was a mess of spindly limbs, the other was thicker, healthy looking and strong.

As the two spoke, Jack listened. He didn’t know much of the language but he was able to deduce by the inflection that the first man was asking the other a question and he was able to pick out the word  _ ‘mutt.’ _ It was meant in a derogatory way, similarly to the word  _ whore _ in English. Jack’s nose wrinkled at the insult. 

Without prompting, Jack found himself face to face with the barrel of the man’s handgun, an ST9, if Jack remembered correctly. He didn’t waver. Hadn’t been the first time a gun was shoved in his face and if he got out of this alive, it certainly wouldn’t be the last. 

“On your knees.” The man said and Jack scoffed, the corner of his mouth flicking up in a disgusted sneer as he shook his head. The man shrugged before he pistol whipped Jack with a force that left a gash over his right eyebrow. It wasn’t hard enough to knock him out but it was enough to have him hunched over. 

A knee to his chest knocked the wind out of him enough for one of them, he assumed the stronger looking one, to get him down to his knees like originally requested only now, his wrists were bound with a set of reinforced handcuffs. 

“Would’ve been too easy to do while he slept, wouldn’t it  _ Ilya.” _ Hissed the larger of the two, spitting out the man’s name as if it were poison in his mouth. His accent was heavier than his brother’s and the way he spoke was unpracticed. 

“Less fun to watch.” Was all Ilya had to say while sitting down cross legged in front of Jack as he rustled around in the bag. There were a lot of things Jack could imagine coming from that bag, mostly weaponry, but what he didn’t expect was a little tin can with a picture of a very pleasant-looking black dog on the label. He blinked, watching as Ilya pulled the tab on the lid back and unearthed the grayish brown sludge from beneath. The stench was the first thing that hit him, curling a knot in Jack’s stomach and nauseating him far worse than the chloroform did. Whatever the hell this shit was, he wouldn’t feed it to his dog if he had one. 

It wasn’t hard for Jack to put two and two together when the man scooped out a hefty glob of it from the can with his bare hands, gesturing toward him. Jack pulled his head back reflexively, glaring at the man who feigned offence. 

“Oh come, Mutt, it’s been twelve hours since we caught you. You must be hungry.” He said. There was something about the tone in his voice that filled Jack with dread. It was rehearsed, like it had been done over and over again. Jack didn’t budge. With a sigh, one that hardly sounded bothered, the man latched his hand beneath Jack’s jaw and pulled his face up, forcing his mouth open before shoveling the sizable clump in. Quickly, Ilya pulled his hand out of the way before Jack could trap his fingers, instead using both to clamp Jack’s mouth shut. Tears welled in his eyes as he gagged. Not only was the flavor comparable to literal dog shit, but there was too much in his mouth. Sticky clumps of artificial meat pressed against the back of his throat in a way that had him physically feeling the bile rise up from his stomach while he retched on his knees. He’d hardly noticed when Ilya leaned in close to his ear. 

  
  


“Remember, whatever comes back up,  _ will  _ go back down.” The blonde whispered and Jack pondered if eating his own vomit would be worse than swallowing whatever was in his mouth. His final decision had been to comply for his own well being. If the team ended up finding him and his official cause of death was listed as  _ ‘choked on dog food,’ _ well… he’d never be able to live it down. 

The process was repeated until the can was empty and by that point, Jack’s stomach felt like it was going to stage a coup. He should’ve known it wasn’t over and a second can being opened was what set him off. As Ilya reached to pick up his face once more, Jack jolted forward fast enough to sink his teeth into his captor’s hand, only letting go when he was nailed with a hit to the mouth that drew his teeth together in an agonizing  _ clip _ . Spitting Ilya’s blood back at him felt like a small victory until he noticed the blonde didn’t seem very bothered by it, simply clicking his tongue as he wrapped his hand with a towel he’d produced from the bag. 

“That’s a bad boy,” He said, shaking his head with an unnervingly calm expression. “But, I’ll admit I was hoping you’d do that.” 

Another few words of Sokovian left Ilya’s mouth and without a hitch, the other brother was hauling him back. Jack fought him on it, of course but with the added disadvantage of his wrists being stuck together, he was on his back in a heap in a moments notice. 

“You see, Mutt,” Ilya started, stepping over him before kneeling over Jack’s body. “Dogs who bite need to be reminded of how grateful they should be for their teeth.” 

For the second time, Ilya was forcing Jack’s mouth open and this time he used a spanner to do it, one he’d picked out from his little plastic bag of horrors. Ilya shoved it between Jack’s teeth and hummed in content, pulling some kind of scalar from the bag. He got started without a word, shoving the tool into Jack’s mouth. It was sharp and made quick work scraping away at his gums. Blood pooled at the back of his throat and he jerked away, desperately trying to hook his leg around one of Ilya’s in hopes to kick him off. But he couldn’t reach that far up. A guttural growl left his throat as he struggled while jolts of agony tore through his nerves and burst within his jaw like a firework display.

“But molars are special teeth, aren’t they?” Ilya mused as he continued with his work. “The flesh around them has to be carved down before you can get them out. Only then can you pull them properly.” 

Jack growled as he felt the pliers on the inside of his cheek, doing little to stop the pained sounds he was making as Ilya ripped the tooth from the back of his mouth. Once finished, he stood and so did his brother, leaving Jack to roll onto his stomach and cough his own blood up onto the floor. Panting through the pain, he tried to listen when he hears a phone ring. More words he can’t understand are exchanged and Ilya snaps the outdated flip phone shut, tossing the things he brought with him back into the bag, along with Jack’s tooth. 

“I’m so sorry, sweet Mutt, but we have to be going for now.” He said, sounding so genuinely disappointed that it raked a shiver down Jack’s spine. “Until next time.” 

The two of them left Jack there alone, his hands still secured behind his back. The locks clicked into place but the lights were left on and once the bleeding had stopped, Jack found his way back to the corner he’d claimed as his own. For a while he spent his time staring up at the dimmed fluorescents above him. Long, cylindrical tubes that looked like they belonged in a drab office building, ones that made his headache worse. Finally, he dropped his head. It might not have been the smartest move, but he needed to sleep. 

✩

That same, loud, ear piercing siren sounded through the room, ripping Jack into consciousness and getting him to his feet faster than a rabbit would return to a den after spotting a predator. The locks on the door clicked and Jack pressed his back into the wall. Only this time, he winced as his shoulders came in contact. His arms ached from the strenuous position but the thought of Ilya having an open shot at his back felt worse than the pain. The pair entered again, adorning new clothes. 

“So sorry to leave you so suddenly yesterday.” Ilya sighed. Yesterday… It left him questioning how long he slept and how often they sounded that buzzer but he filed it away in his mind as a viable way to tell time. “Today, I have something fun for you.”

With him, Ilya brought a folding chair as well as a metal canister. His brother trailed behind him, a clear bin full of sloshing water in his hands. It seemed to be a good thirty centimeters or so deep. Ilya set down the canister and unfolded the chair, gesturing to it while giving Jack an expectant look. Jack just stared at him and Ilya chuckled a bit. 

“Yura,” He said, catching the other man’s attention who glared at Jack like he’d just insulted their mother. Jack fought the man —Yura if he was correctly assuming that was the man’s name— to little avail. All it left him with was a dislocated shoulder and a painful shortness of breath. Wheezing as his head was forced back by Yura’s fingers, which curled in his hair, Jack’s vision was quickly obscured by a white cloth over his face. Typical. But he had to say, he preferred being waterboarded over getting another tooth ripped out and dog food forced down his throat. 

Closing his eyes, he braced himself for what was to come. The liquid that covered his face was lukewarm and unmenacing but Jack quickly realized that it was very  _ oily. _ For a single second, he was suspended in confused bliss before he realized that what Ilya was pouring on him was  _ not  _ water. 

Gasoline seeped into his mouth, drops of it sliding into his nose and Jack had to keep himself from trying to take a breath. Despite being closed, his eyes burned and he could feel his throat swelling while he thrashed in Yura’s hold as best he could with the burning in his shoulder. Coughs tore their way from his chest with a force so great that it felt like the flesh of his esophagus was peeling back and Jack was all but helpless as he kicked and bucked and did everything he could to tear himself away to no avail. 

Slowly, he could feel something climbing up his throat and before he could stop himself, blood tainted vomit soaked the rag covering his face. The chair was tilted over and fire raked down his spine the second his shoulder came in contact with the floor. He had hardly finished expelling the contents of his stomach when another set of fingers tangled themselves into his now wet and greasy hair.

No warning was given before he was wrenched forward. Freezing liquid filled his lungs from his fit of coughs when Ilya forced his head into the tub of water that was on the floor. Jack struggled away from the grip, almost knocking the vat over in the process but it was steadied before he could. His mind couldn’t keep track of how long he was held under as the dizziness from the gasoline was aided by his lack of oxygen, both of them promising to take him back into his previously interrupted unconsciousness. But before they could, Ilya pulled his head up with an unapologetic laugh. Icy water drenched his shoulders and chest, droplets so cold they almost felt fiery racing down his torso. 

“You should have a drink, you might not get another for a while.” Ilya warned before he shoved Jack’s face back into the vat. If he had the choice, he would refuse but with each cough and gag, he swallowed the greasy water that only aided the burn in his lungs. And again before he passed out, Ilya pulled him up, only this time tossing him back into the gravel. He was saying something, something that Jack’s oxygen deprived mind couldn’t latch onto. Drowsiness overcame him and for a single second, he thought he was actually going to pass out. But before he could, the remaining water was poured over his body, sending a painful jolt of energy through him. Ilya whistled as if seeing a beautiful sight.

“I didn’t have a lot of time for you today, but maybe tomorrow.” He said in a cheery tone. Jack was too busy dry heaving to bite back at him. Just like yesterday, the two cleaned up, Yura retrieved the handcuffs, the doors were locked, and this time, the lights turned off. He was left sopping wet in the gravel, laying there like a deer that’d been hit by a car that didn’t do the job. 

Curling into a ball, trying to retain any of the little heat left in him, his attention turned to his left hand. When he got lost, staring at his wedding band, thoughts of Brock found him. It was something that was becoming common in his alone time. He thought of a lot of things when it came to Brock. After his torment the day prior, he thought about Brock’s terrible cooking. Thought about how even the dog food tasted better than the pork steaks Brock had made for dinner on the night of their first anniversary. Thought about how they’d gone out to some hole in the wall burger joint instead. 

Right then, Jack couldn’t keep himself from thinking about how warm Brock was. About how warm he’d always been. Jack remembered the first time they’d slept in the same bed and how he couldn’t stay under the blankets because Brock was just so damn  _ hot. _ And how during the summer, it would get so bad that Brock would sweat in his sleep enough to leave a visible imprint on his pillow. He always thought it was the worst thing in the world but now, all he wanted was to lay in bed with his overwhelmingly hot and sometimes ridiculously sweaty husband.

A sigh left him as he curled further in on himself. He would be back. He didn’t know when but eventually, he would. That much he was sure of. For now, all he could do was wait for the right moment, whatever that would end up being. But he made a promise to himself while staring at that ring that he’d get out of there. He didn’t sleep for a long time that night and he figured it was the stench of the gasoline that eventually took him.

Another siren tore through his body and woke him up with a headache. The lights were on and there was a metal bowl by the door alongside a bottle of water. He approached it warily, listening closely to hear the locks on the door. Once he grabbed the rations left, he slid back to the corner of the room. Now feeling strong enough for it, Jack took in a shaking breath before forcefully resetting his shoulder, coughing out a cry, not unlike that of a fox being skinned alive, as he did. Only once he was done swearing his vengeance to every god that would listen did he sit back down to have a look at his meager spoils. 

The metal bowl was filled with more dog food, to his lament. It was rustled around in an oddly suspicious way, one that led Jack to believe it was drugged somehow. The water wasn’t much better, the seal on it already broken. After a bit of arguing with himself, he decided to drink half. That way the effects wouldn’t be as strong and he’d stay somewhat hydrated. The catch 22 irritated him, —drink and be drugged or die from dehydration— but he knew that the small mercy of unpromised water from Ilya couldn’t come without a price. 

He’s left alone in the room for the time being. No locks ever turning, no Ilya ever making an appearance. He paced the room in frustration. He didn’t know how long it took for him to start feeling tired again but when his body began to weigh heavier than usual, he assumed it was whatever they’d certainly put in the water. He tried to ignore it in favor of pacing further, which he continued to do until his feet got tired and he found his way back to the corner. Being alone with his thoughts almost felt worse than dealing with Ilya sometimes. Remembering the last thing Brock said to him was still painful and he didn’t know what he hated more; the thought of Brock regretting it all and tearing himself apart or the thought of him not giving a shit about it. Shaking the idea from his head, he scolded himself. Brock loved him. Of course he did and to try to convince himself otherwise was an insult to the man he married, a show of unimaginable disrespect that Jack shamed himself for even considering. 

Groaning, he knocked his head against the wall, lightly, three times in succession. He didn’t like thinking about it but the longer he stayed there, the closer Ilya would likely get to killing him. Whatever the man had in store for him next was out of Jack’s grasp of imagination. For now, he let himself fall asleep. 

Another siren sounded, another new set of food and water was placed in his cell with the old ones carted away. This time he didn’t hesitate ignoring the food in favor of half of the water, and for another day he paced around the limited space. There was a rather notable change in his “schedule” when the time finally came for him to use the dreaded hole in the opposite corner and something about pissing in a bottomless abyss in the floor unnerved him more than it probably should have. He supposed it was another thing he’d have to get used to for the time being. He took up pacing again soon after until he got too tired to stand and eventually too tired to think about the situation. About Ilya, about Brock, and about how he was stuck there until he somehow figured a way out. 

It happened again, for a third time. The cycle repeated. 

By this point, Jack was suspecting that he was being fed every twelve hours. He was getting hungry and his compromise was drinking all the allotted water. He got tired faster but it still felt better than willingly eating dog food. He wondered if it would be so bad to be forgotten there, by everyone, Brock included. Unfortunately, that was the thought that settled with him for the night as he gave in to the drugs. 

And things continued. Over, and over, and over again. 

✩

Being woken up in unsettling ways was becoming a theme with Ilya and on today’s menu was a hefty shock to his neck. Electricity threw his body into an instant state of alertness and oddly enough, Jack felt more energized right then since he had at the start of his mission. Not knowing how long ago that was was jarring to say the least. 

“You slept through your alarm.” Ilya said with his eerily pleasant smile. What he thought was a rather strong taser turned out to be a cattle prod and Jack shook a twitch from his neck as he stared. Two things were new here. One, Ilya was alone and two, the door was open. Staring at the gangly man, Jack licked his lips in anticipation before he finally said  _ ‘fuck it’ _ and took a mad dash for the exit. He could feel the metal of the threshold on his fingertips in the same moment another shock racked through his body. Ilya didn’t let up as quickly, preferring to watch Jack seize up on the gravel for a few extraneous seconds before easing off. Trembling and all but heaving, Jack forced himself to his feet, keeping a stance that was wobbly at best. 

“I have a friend for you today. Consider it… apology.” He said, stepping outside of the door momentarily to heave a five gallon bucket filled to the brim with something dark and viscous. The black of the plastic made the color of the liquid inside seem to match and Jack didn’t want to know what it was, despite knowing that if Ilya had it in hand, it really was for him. “I really am sorry for leaving you by yourself this past week.” 

Week. That meant the sirens and the food was coming to him once a day, not twice like he’d originally assumed. He wondered if the drugs they were using on him was stunting his appetite more which would explain why he wasn’t feeling very hungry between meals.

Yet another jab with the prod had him on the floor and Ilya kept at it for an excruciating amount of time before he stopped. The contents of the bucket were poured over his head, feeling like it was burning his flesh with how hot it was. Or maybe he was just getting used to the cold. While hot, he noted that nothing was eating away at him and while attempting to wipe it from his eyes, he saw that it wasn’t black, but instead a dark red. The pungent smell hit him worse than the dog food and gasoline combined and this time, he couldn’t hold the contents of his stomach. 

“Don’t be such a bitch about it, just cow’s blood.” Ilya snickered, tossing the bucket out of the door as he whistled down the hallway, undoubtedly calling to Yura. There was the skittering sound of claws on the tile floors outside and a cacophony of growls growing ever closer. 

Jack got to his feet at the same time he saw the dog, his eyes darting between Yura and the animal as the Sokovian man unclipped the muzzle, pulling it away just quick enough to avoid the canine’s snapping jaws. It’s nose twitched in the air before rage filled icy eyes landed on him. The dog barked and reared up on its hind legs, pulling Yura forward while it lunged at Jack. Shielding themselves mostly behind the door, Jack was frozen while he watched Ilya’s grotesquely thin fingers unclip the leash and pull back, slamming the door and sliding the locks into place. 

Snarls erupted from the canine as it rushed him, its teeth sinking deep into the arm he used to shield himself before it pulled back to wrench its head to either side, tearing at the flesh. With no other choice, Jack laid his heavy, steel toed combat boot into the dog’s side. It cried on the impact, gasping for breaths in pants while Jack’s blood seeped from its mouth. The wound on his arm stung, feeling as though a barrage of executioner wasps had congregated there. He wondered if that was an after effect of the festering cow’s blood. The dog wasn’t winded for long, all but tackling him as it snapped mercilessly at his throat. Jack’s grip on the scruff of the dog’s neck was getting looser the longer he tried to hold it back and he resorted to taking a firstfull of gravel and crushing it against the side of the canine’s head, getting it off of him just long enough for him to get back to his feet. 

When the dog attacked, it jumped up, paws on his shoulders, effectively shoving him into the wall. Another quick snap at him caught him in the face, tearing the right side of his lower lip. Another punch to the dog’s throat had it falling backward. The two of them stood, staring at each other in a clash of blue and green, panting in unison. 

Once more the dog ran at him and, deciding he had to sacrifice some skin, Jack hugged onto the animal. Sharp claws tore at his body while a jaw full of teeth latched onto his shoulder. It kept pulling its head back, trying to pull a chunk of meat with it but before it could, Jack managed to wrap his arms around the canine’s head and neck. 

“‘M sorry,” He murmured with a cough as his bicep pulled tight around the dog’s windpipe. The canine whimpered and squirmed, never refusing to stop gnashing its teeth at him. Finally, with a good grip, he contorted the dog’s neck, breaking it as quickly as he could. He dropped the limp carcass and stumbled back, only supported by the wall and his shaking legs. His hand rose to meet his mouth, pressing his torn lip against his teeth while he stared at the mess left behind. It felt like he couldn’t breathe and because of this, he couldn’t calm down. Was this what it felt like to be wild? To be nothing more than a feral mutt? 

Killing wasn’t something new to Jack, hell, hunting wasn’t either. But there was a big difference between killing a man or hunting a deer and fighting another predator that had its sights aimed on your throat. 

He couldn’t think with how loud his mind was, the adrenaline in his veins refusing to calm down for the time being. He stood, his eyes locked firmly on the door and only bouncing to the dead dog for a second to make  _ sure _ it was actually dead. But the door never unlocked and after a while, the lights turned off. Jack sunk to the floor with his aching wounds and shaking hands. 

By that point the blood on him had dried, leaving behind a flaky, itchy mess that he couldn’t ignore. Every waking moment he had was filled with paranoia, he could’ve sworn on several occasions that he heard the gravel shift and that there was a growl from across the room. But even when exhaustion took him out, his mind never settled. He kept hearing the sounds of that angry dog. 

✩

Icey water enveloped his body and he couldn’t keep the strangled gasp from him leaving his chest as he sat up, pressing himself further into the wall while the stream continued. Pressure from the water seemed to seep into the marrow of his bones, freezing him at his core and snuffing out any flame in him that could’ve worked to keep him warm. This went on for several, painstaking minutes, until his fingers felt numb and the blood in him felt like it’d cooled completely before it finally stopped. Jack looked up to see Yura, on his own, with a hose in hand that led outside the door. 

“Do it and I’ll bring another dog in here.” He threatened the second Jack’s eyes fell on the escape path. Last time he tried such a stunt, it didn’t work in his favor, so he decided that the risk outweighed all else. Yura tossed a water bottle at him before he slammed the door shut hard enough to make Jack wince. Like clockwork, the locks clicked in place and he looked at the bottle. Just like all the others, the seal was broken. A sigh left him as he cracked it open anyway, sucking down what he had. A drug induced coma didn’t sound half bad right about then. Throbbing in his mouth stopped him and he paused, raising a hand up to his once severed lip. It was stitched shut. Upon further examination, he found that his arm and shoulder suffered a similar treatment. Poorly aligned sutures wove between the gaps in his flesh looking like something straight out of some torture porn movie. But it was better than leaving them to rot and become gangrenous, he supposed. 

He stayed awake until the lights turned off. There were several more cycles of sirens and food, pacing and sleeping. Jack counted another six days of going mad inside of the room, frustrated and more exhausted than ever. 

Thoughts of Brock crossed his mind again. Thoughts of missing him, of hating him, of wanting him, and of wishing for nothing more than to feel the scratch of Brock's stubble when they kissed. If he just hadn’t been so petty, just sucked it up and went inside, risked waking Brock up… He wouldn’t be here. They would’ve had a fight, fucked it out, forgotten about it like they always did. But instead, he got himself stuck in a cage. A dog with no way out, chasing his tail looking for answers. A sigh left him as he turned to his only sense of comfort, the ring he kept so dear to him. No matter what they did to him, it was the only thing that grounded him. The one solid semblance of the outside world he had, the life he had and a reminder of his promise to himself. 

It was almost funny, really, that through everything, all of the bullshit Ilya put him through, he still didn’t want to die. He wouldn’t so long as he could help it but he guessed the funny thing about dying was that he only had so much control over it. A shot to the head wasn’t something he could just muzzle through. But he’d do what he could, for now. The promise he’d made to himself to get out of there still echoed around in his mind, reminding him of better times. Sometimes, in the beginning, he’d believed that his life ended when he got mixed up with HYDRA. That everything he ever knew and loved was lost. He couldn’t see his family anymore, couldn’t live on his own. Any miss step and they could erase him completely. That used to scare him but once he met Brock, once he really got to know him, Jack felt a strange contentment that he didn’t recognize. Because somehow, no matter how bad things got, no matter what happened, and even now, as he stared at his hands, ragged, hurting, and exhausted, Brock somehow made it better. He didn’t know how, especially seeing as Brock was thousands of miles away, but it was just the thought of him. Of being with him, of holding him, that kept Jack’s mind at ease. 

All of it just gave him more incentive to stay alive.

✩

Just as usual, he woke up to that jarring, bone shaking sound that rang through his head well after it’d physically stopped. Glancing up, dread filled him as he noticed the lack of rations there for him. That’s when the locks clicked open again and he stared from his place on the floor, hardly even bothering to sit up. Tossing a duffle bag to the floor, Ilya smiled at him as friendly as a demon could be. Yura wasn’t with him again and Jack wondered if that was a good sign or not. He hadn’t fared well the last time Ilya showed up there alone, so he doubted it. Whatever they were sedating him with was still strong in his system, his mind was groggy and his movements were sluggish at best. So when Ilya approached, he couldn’t do much to fight him off. He swung on the blonde, his fist being caught a little more easily than he’d like to admit. Ilya rewarded him with a fist across his face, straining the stitches that held his lip together. 

With a growl, Jack kicked his leg forward, catching Ilya at the knee. The startled cry that he heard from his captor was satisfying, the only sound of pain he’d been able to invoke from the other since he’d been taken there. It didn’t last long, Ilya was quick to pay him back in the ways of a boot to his ankle and though nothing was broken, it still hurt like hell. 

“You’d do better to listen to me today.” He said, the customary cheer in his voice wavering. Per usual, Jack didn’t listen. He fought the man tooth and nail as long he was able and liked to think he gave Ilya a run for his money. Left the blonde with a cut across the bridge of his nose and a split lip to match his own. But his payback came to an end quicker than it started when Ilya dug his fingers into the wound on Jack’s shoulder, getting him on his knees as he desperately pulled away from it. 

While he was recovering, hunched over with one hand supporting his weight on the ground and the other pressed firmly against his weeping wound, Ilya busied himself rustling through the bag he’d brought. A boot was planted firmly against his already injured shoulder, shoving him onto his back while Ilya grabbed hold of his arms. Struggling didn’t help, his body weighing much heavier from the toxin in his bloodstream. Between the scraping metal and Ilya’s curses in Sokovian, Jack’s muddied mind had trouble latching onto the scratching sensation on his arms. When he finally did glance toward the lunatic that had him straddled, when he saw what Ilya was swearing at, he dropped his head again, doing his best to keep his quaking arms still. 

After only a few minutes, thick threads of barbed wire were wrapped around Jack’s arms, tight coils secured from elbow to wrist without slack. Growling when Ilya used a cautious hand to pull him forward, Jack did his best to follow along. What began as pinpricks grew into something more and Jack panted through it as his shaking body strained to keep him up right. 

“Not so much fight in you anymore?” Ilya asked, circling around him just to shove him forward, allowing the barbs to dig further into his arms as he forced his torso up to keep himself from impaling his own chest. Spit pooled and dripped from his mouth as he struggled, angry as a bull and plotting a revenge he knew he’d never get. “Come on, Mutt, I thought that dog would teach you some more bite.” 

Taunting words continued while Ilya dragged him around, tossing him to the ground every so often just to watch Jack clash with the pain and keep himself from falling fully onto the wire. Long after his arms were dripping with his own blood, Ilya took hold of him and dragged him onto his knees by the wire around his wrist, holding his arms up in front of him, keeping him posed there like a sinner in church. 

“I’ve been watching you. Ever since you got here. Through all of it, you never beg for mercy but I’m giving you a chance.” Ilya said, his voice low. “Pray to your God.” 

“I have no god.” Jack growled lowly at him, his ragged voice full of spite as he made it a point to pull back on Ilya’s hold. The action marred him, tearing at his skin further but it was the point of the matter, the look of realization in Ilya’s eyes leaving satisfaction to quell in Jack’s chest. Whatever happened, he wouldn’t keel over like the dog Ilya pretended he was. And to Jack, it was important that the bastard knew it. 

For the first time, Jack saw Ilya grimace at him. Whatever act he was putting on was quickly fading and he didn’t know what that meant. Didn’t know if it spelled out something fatal in his cards. 

Ilya didn’t let go of his hold on the wire as he pulled Jack to the side, onto his back just to drag him to the other side of the room to retrieve the bag. Silently, he reached inside and before Jack had a chance to recognize what he was holding, Ilya dumped salt over his trembling body. Unable to control himself and helpless to escape, Jack let his voice leave him with all the melodic charm of a dying rabbit. He cursed the man, coughing out the word  _ ‘fuck’ _ like it was the only thing he knew. Ilya left him there like that, left him to suffer on his own, writhing on the floor, singing curses like a prayer, until his cries eventually faded into wheezes. 

Jack had no recollection of passing out again, only waking up with the wire gone and dried blood caking his arms just as it had a few days prior, only this time it was solely his own. He used the water bottle he’d gotten to clean as much of the salt from his wounds as he could manage, hissing at the sting but reveling in the relief. 

More days passed without hide nor hair of the blonde bastard that did this to him and Jack stopped counting the sirens.

✩

A cruel buzzing invaded his empty mind as he slowly opened his eyes and the first thing he recognized was a burning sensation beneath his ribcage. Startling, Jack found that he was being pinned down, something that had become sickeningly familiar. Far too tired to sit up and fight the man, he let his head fall against the gravel, unhindered by the way it dug into the back of his skull

“Yura was right, you’re much easier to deal with when you’re sleeping.” Ilya said, hardly audible over the buzz of what Jack had glanced down to find was a tattoo gun. “Sit still, I’m nearly finished.” 

Jack had gotten tattoos before and of course it wasn’t necessarily a nice feeling but, something about the way Ilya was doing it was wrong. He was digging it in too deep, the flesh there being carved out by the needles rather than simply picking up color. Each time Ilya swiped the rag in his free hand over the etching to smear the ink and blood away, the roughness of the material only sought to irritate the wound further. But true to his word, the buzzing stopped soon after. 

“All done.” Ilya sighed, seemingly satisfied with himself while he released Jack, leaving him free to sit up. As he did, he glanced down and right dead center, at the lowermost point of his sternum, the word ‘ _ filth’  _ written in shaky, unpracticed script. 

“Suits you well, rotten American.” Ilya laughed, his voice harsh and caustic, as he tossed the bloody, ink soaked rag onto the floor. Silence blanketed them when Ilya sat on the ground at the opposite side of the room and watched while Jack pushed his shirt down, scooting back to his corner before uttering a quiet  _ ‘why.’ _ A detached sigh left his captor but he answered anyway. 

“I want you to remember where you came from. A filthy nation with filthy morals and a stupidly loyal people under a filthy government.” Ilya growled out, a rage in his voice that was unfamiliar but still, less unsettling than that faux smile. Even so, Jack was still getting used to the lack of enthusiasm, uneasy with what the possible ramification would be for him. 

Ilya didn’t speak again for a while, leaving the two of them sitting in tense solitude despite being in each other's company. The tension grew more suffocating as Jack wondered what would happen to him once it came to a head. With little energy, the wounds on his arms still fresh and agonizing, the rest of his body aching and uncooperative, he reminded himself that he would get out of there. Eventually. Jack looked down into his lap as he toyed with the ring on his finger that had proven to become the only comfort he had. By that point, he’d gotten thinner. The metal band didn’t hug his skin tightly anymore, in fact it was hardly kept in place by the swell of his knuckle. It left a sour taste in his mouth. 

“I bet you miss her. Your wife.” Ilya said, his voice wondrous as a child. Jack glanced at him, knowing better than to make any corrections and offered a small nod. He didn’t know how long he’d been there, his idea of time was so fucked up he could hardly tell up from down. No clue how long he’d been left in that awful cell that still reeked of gasoline and festering cow’s blood. All he knew was that it’d been far too long and that hope for escape or at the very least rescue was dwindling each and every time he woke up to see the dark gravel beneath him and black eyes peering into his very soul, punishing him for more crimes than he could imagine and promising a lifetime of torment as penance. 

“Is she pretty?” Ilya asked and Jack couldn’t help the little chuckle that left him.

“Yeah, she’s real pretty.” He offered, the words falling bitterly from him. 

“Do you think she’d still love you if she saw you like this?” Ilya asked and Jack paused for a moment before he nodded again with a quiet  _ ‘yeah.’ _ Ilya laughed cruelly before he spat. “Yes? What makes you say that?” 

With a shrug, Jack went back to fidgeting with the ring. “‘Cause she’s seen me worse.” 

Without warning, Ilya got up and Jack immediately tensed. He tried to stand only to be met with a boot against the side of his head. When he fell onto his hands and knees, Ilya tried to press his stomach into the gravel but Jack refused to go down without fighting, trying his damndest to shove the man off only to be stunned with a fist to his ribs. Panting and exhausted, Jack groaned at the weight on his back when Ilya climbed on top of him and all he could do was watch as the man took a hold of his wrist. 

Jack didn’t say anything when Ilya flicked his knife open. As the blade inched closer, Jack tugged and pulled at his tattered wrist but his attempt yielded little results. His teeth sunk into his tongue at the exact moment the blade sunk into the flesh of his finger just below his ring. Blood welled up in his mouth just as it splattered against the rocks, but try as he might, he couldn’t buck Ilya off of him. A choked cry left him as Ilya sawed the serrated blade back and forth through the bone and after a sickening crunch, the rest went through nauseatingly easily. 

With his chest heaving, Jack laid panting on the floor as Ilya stood up, pacing as Jack usually did with his new prize in hand. 

“Nothing very fun here, I don’t think I could even sell this.” Ilya said, sounding almost disappointed as he pulled the ring free before tossing the disembodied digit onto the floor. 

Fear welled up in his chest, suffocating him as he forced himself up onto his knees. That ring was the only thing grounding him to the outside world, the only thing keeping him from completely losing his sanity. If it was gone, he’d have nothing. The thought alone was enough to invoke terror in him because losing that ring, to him, was like losing Brock. And he wasn’t sure he could live through losing Brock again. 

“Please,” Jack coughed out, pushing himself onto his knees. “ _ Ilya.”  _

Ilya looked at him with a twisted grin for a moment before focusing on flipping the ring in the air like one would a coin before catching it. 

He didn’t say anything more, headstrong but not unwilling to beg further. Humiliation welled heavily in his chest, his eyes burning with angry, embarrassed tears that he refused to let go of. With his hands clinging to Ilya’s pale colored hoodie, messing the front of it with more dirt and his blood, he watched as the man looked down on him. Like he was nothing, like he really was just a bothersome animal, a dog he fed out of obligation. 

With a scoff, Ilya rolled his eyes and tossed the ring toward Jack who was hardly able to catch it, falling back on his back as he did so and sufficiently knocking the wind out of himself. 

“I was only playing, Mutt. Don’t get so upset about it.” Ilya scoffed, his tone like that of an older sibling being scolded for teasing the younger, turning on his heel to leave the room and lock his mutt away again. 

Even the relief he felt wasn’t enough to halt the hitch in his chest. Leaning forward, he clutched the ring close to his chest and screamed. Screamed because he was angry, because he was scared, because it was all he had left, and because he didn’t know how the fuck he let himself end up like this. He wanted to go home, he wanted to… He wanted to see Brock.

Sniffing, Jack pushed himself up and reached around his neck to undo the chain that held his dog tags there before he slid the ring around it, listening as it clinked on contact with his tags before securing it in place again. Sitting back against the wall, he allowed a few silent tears to fall as his right hand squeezed around the ring and he murmured an almost inaudible; 

“I miss you.” 

✩

For the first time since he’d gotten there, Jack woke up on his own. Pushing himself up into a sitting position, he glanced at the door just to see it open again. Looking over, he quickly spotted Ilya, a shotgun in his lap as he stared out the open door. Jack didn’t move, staying in his corner as Ilya sat on the other side of the room just like last time. 

They were silent for a while before Ilya decided to speak to him, never meeting his gaze. 

“How long do you think you’ve been here?” Was all he asked and Jack stopped to think. It’d been a while since he’d stopped counting the sirens. He wasn’t really sure what number he was on and with no way to keep track, nothing he could use to scratch marks into the wall to count, he just couldn’t keep up. He had a general idea, backtracking through his head while trying to recount the muddled days that seemed to bleed into one, but he couldn’t me sure. He shrugged his shoulder, throughout his best guess. 

“Nine weeks.” He said simply, drawing a laugh from the other man. That’s when Ilya finally met his eyes, dead looking eyes without the same mirth he’d come to know. Somehow, it was comforting in comparison to seeing the man laugh like a giddy child every time he got the chance to cut more flesh away. 

“Try three.” He said and Jack paused, his head having a hard time keeping up with the new information. Three? That didn’t make any sense, how could it only be three? The sirens… “We’d usually wait a few hours every time you fell asleep, get into some different clothes if we needed, put food in here if we needed. I’m surprised you went this long without giving into it. I tried giving you more but you always just went with the water. 

Yura and I, we made it a game,” He paused to laugh, shaking his head a bit as he looked down to toy with the gun. “To see how many of your ‘days’ we could stuff into one. Our record was five, I told him we could do a whole week but you got very good at tolerating what we gave you, I had to start putting more sedative in the water.” 

Jack shivered at the thought, his stomach churning with unease. After another bout of silence, he had a question of his own. 

“What’re you trying to gain here?” He asked, his voice weak and raspy. Ilya huffed a bit of air from his nose, like Jack said something that was just funny enough to warrant a reaction. 

“Gain?” He asked and Jack felt his body get hotter as he got more irritated. He hated how mocking the man sounded, hated how he was able to make him feel so stupid with just a single word. It made him miss the pain, miss what made sense. Pain was always so honest, so authentic in its meaning and straightforward. 

“Is it information you want?” He growled, frustrated with Ilya’s unending game of cat and mouse. 

“Would you even tell me if I asked for it?” Ilya asked with a tired grin on his face that directly contradicted the scowl on Jack’s.

“No.” Jack responded bitterly, dropping his gaze while Ilya laughed. It lacked the oddly genuine quality to it that Jack had become used to. 

“Oh, sweet Mutt, I didn’t  _ want  _ anything. Well, other than someone to hurt when I feel the need to.” Ilya sighed, leaning his head back against the wall to stare up at the ceiling. “My brother and I like to hunt Americans. We’re part of a gang, they help us as long as we do our jobs. When it's Yura’s turn, he keeps them for a few days, dedicates all of his time to making them suffer, and then he kills them. But I think there’s ways to make you hurt worse. Because I won’t kill you and you’ll live the rest of your life afraid of me.” 

There was a tell tale burn in Jack’s nose as he heard Ilya’s explanation. The same one he always felt when tears swelled behind his eyes, begging to burst and form a waterfall over his face but Jack didn’t let it happen. With a sniff turned into a sigh, he shook his head. Ilya continued. 

“Your people hurt me and my brother greatly,” He said, more pain in his words than malice. “We lived through hell because of you and your military. To have a chance to get one of the soldiers, at least that’s what I think you are, well, it was more than I could ever ask for. I usually forget them, discard them and move on but you, dear Mutt, I’ll never forget you.” 

Sokovian Gang… So it wasn’t the organization they’d infiltrated. It seemed that the two of them had both run circles around each other when concerning their identity and Jack wondered exactly  _ how _ Ilya had found them. Wondered if that meant they were closer to the safehouse than he’d originally predicted. The idea disheartened him, to think he could’ve been so painfully close to where Brock was all this time, he wasn’t sure how to handle it. 

With a deep, almost melancholy sigh, Ilya stood, shotgun in hand, and left the room without looking back. The click of the locks resonated impossibly loud in the silent room. Not long after, the building rumbled to life and a heavy mist filled the room from the vent in the ceiling. Jack couldn’t find the strength to move before it laid claim to him. 

✩

Waking up in the freezing cold wasn’t anything new to him. Over the past, apparently, three weeks, he’d gotten used to less than adequate temperatures and decided that if the option to sleep was there, he’d usually take it. Only this time, he couldn’t because while he was used to being cold, he wasn’t used to it being so fucking  **_loud._ ** Birds overhead were screeching their songs out in ways that were driving him crazy, the sound of gravel beneath a set of heavy tires was grinding against his ears while he laid there, and in the not too far distance, he heard the cries of a train. None of it made sense to him, his mind unable to latch onto it as something tangible. That is, until a clump of snow, once nestled in the branches it chose as it’s home, grew too heavy and fell directly on top of him. Jolting up with a force that had his body groaning in protest, Jack winced at the brightness of the outside, the sunlight relentless and cruel against his unadjusted eyes. Even through overcast skies, the sun on the snow near blinded him and it took him a minute for him to adjust. 

It was another set of tires on that gravel road close by that really woke him up and, with the aid of the tree beside him, Jack struggled to his feet. Though his entire body was aching, it was his ankle that posed the biggest threat, still aching from Ilya’s brief assault on it. 

Ilya…

The mere thought of the man had Jack looking around, gauging his surroundings with a harsh skepticism. Hunter’s instinct took over and Jack found himself scouring the immediate area for signs of other life. Tracks in the snow, scuffed bark at the base of a tree, anything. But, save for the prints of a raccoon, one hardly heavy enough to leave an indent in the packed snow, a few feet beside him. 

From what he could tell, he was completely alone. Something else he’d noted was that he was fully dressed again; the many belts and harnesses that generally went along with his STRIKE gear returned to him; jacket over his shoulders, tact belt loose around his waist, but most importantly, his thigh holster and gun. It felt good to have the weight of the M9 in his hands again and as he clicked open the chamber, he found it was loaded, three shots missing from the clip. 

Despite this, it felt like a game. Like at any moment, Ilya would come down the mountain, Yura in tow, just to snatch him up again. So, he heaved himself toward the only sign of life he’d heard that wasn’t the birds in the trees. The road wasn’t too far ahead of him, just over the cusp of a hill that he had to drag himself over but once on his feet again, his heaving doing little to soothe the light headedness, Jack took a good look up the drag. The dark gravel made his chest tighten and his jaw twitch as he clenched his teeth but to his relief, it looked well worn and he didn’t have to wait long to hear yet another set of tires coming around the bend. 

With a quick huff, Jack limped his way into the middle of the pathway. Hitchhiking wasn’t usually his go to but with no information on where he was or how close he was to actual civilization, Jack would make an exception. He kept his gun raised, the risks in his mind too present for him to even think to do otherwise. Already having convinced himself that it would be Ilya sitting in the driver’s seat, he found that he was genuinely surprised to see the face of a terrified old man when the truck tires came to a screeching halt, kicking gravel up at him as it did. He wasted no time, limping to the passenger side, tearing the door open, and slamming it with an unneeded force. 

Immediately, the man beside him sputtered out too quick words but Jack was able to get the gist of it, picking out  _ ‘please don’t’ _ and  _ ‘family.’ _ If he weren’t so worn out and relieved, he might’ve rolled his eyes at the theatrics. 

“I dunno… I don’t know what you’re saying.” Jack huffed out between labored breaths, being forced to raise his breaking voice over the man’s panicked pleas. But once he did, the cab went quiet before the old man squinted at him, his face alight with something akin to recognition. 

“You’re that missing American.” He said, almost in awe. A lot of questions came to Jack’s mind before he finally settled on the realization that, in some way, Brock  _ had _ been looking for him. He had to ignore the ache of relief that washed over him, warming him better than the heater in the old truck. 

“Hospital.” Was all he croaked out, the old man quickly obliging. As the man drove, Jack was beginning to recognize that they were in the same town that the safehouse was outside of. The opposite side, sure, but the same place. They drove outside of the mountain, on their way to the bigger city not too far from there. But Jack never once lowered his gun, despite the many times the old man tried to convince him that it wasn’t necessary. A part of his mind still wasn’t able to grasp that he’d been let go, maybe he hadn’t really. Anyone could hire someone to drive up and down a mountain to pick up a hitchhiker and take him back to a location. Only this time, Jack would be ready. 

But sure enough, the man brought Jack to a hospital. It was only when they’d stopped and he had one foot out the door that he finally re-holstered his gun and only when he was fully out that he uttered a quiet  _ ‘thanks.’ _

Limping his way into the emergency room’s automatic doors, Jack ignored the stares, his eyes set on the front counter. Jack wasn’t listening to the woman’s startled greeting, taking the moment to let himself process. He didn’t know what he was going to say, what he was  _ supposed _ to say. All that time he spent pleading to any diety, holy or unholy, that would listen, for the opportunity to talk to his husband again, he never actually thought about what he would fucking say. It was almost funny. 

All it took was the exhausted mutter of the unpracticed Sokovian word for  _ ‘phone’ _ and he was handed exactly that. It hadn’t even occurred to him until he’d gotten ahold of it that the damn thing might not make international calls but he’d come too far to not at least check. And with a shake in his hands, he punched in the only number he remembered by heart anymore. 

Three rings passed before the line picked up. 

“Rumlow.” Was the only thing he heard. Try as he might to sound cold and professional, Jack could hear it in his voice. The fatigue. The lethargy. Brock always got that way when he hadn’t been sleeping well. 

“Hey, Brock.” Jack managed, his voice already weak. 

“Jack?” There was a chord of disbelief in his voice that made Jack laugh a bit, comfort welling in his chest as he leaned the rest of his weight on the counter in front of him. 

“Yeah, yeah it’s me.” He mumbled, latching his free hand behind his neck as he brokenly asked,

“Can you come pick me up?”

  
  


✩


	2. The More Satisfying His Dinner

Not long after his conversation with Brock, Jack was taken to the U.S. Embassy in Sokovia. Even though he knew he should’ve been relieved or happy to be with people who could keep him safe, the only thing on his mind was Brock. Knowing he was on his way while also knowing there was at least another grueling ten hours to wait filled him with a swell of homesickness that was eating away at his resolve quicker than anything Ilya had put him through. 

During his wait, the doctors there tried to convince him to get some sleep but he just didn’t want to. Over the past few weeks, sleeping had only opened a gateway for waking up to pain and a part of Jack was afraid of it being a dream. That if he fell asleep, he’d wake up in that room again; where gravel jabbed into every part of him and he was constantly nauseated by the stench of blood and gasoline. He knew it was irrational but he’d just rather not take the risk, no matter how badly he needed the rest. 

Those ten hours were anything but fast and he spent most of it sitting, waiting, and pacing. He’d never paced before but now, it felt like the only rational thing to do with his free time. Pace back and forth, back and forth like a caged circus tiger waiting for the next fight against his ringmaster. 

When Brock finally did arrive, he nearly tackled Jack into a hug, clasping his hand around the back of his husband’s neck to pull Jack’s head down to rest on his shoulder. There was a bit of unease that slithered in his gut for a moment only to be stomped out by Brock’s smell. That wonderful smell of cedar and honey and leather. He melted into it. 

“Jack, I’m s-” 

“Later.” Jack cut him off. He didn’t want to talk about it anymore, didn’t want to acknowledge it. All he wanted was this. Was to be held and comforted. To feel safe. 

After signing a few papers and verifying his identification, Jack was able to leave with Brock on a quinjet. There were a few HYDRA techs on board, eager to ask him if he was subjected to any form of experimentation and sorely disappointed with his response. Their reactions were unwarranted, irritating. 

“Yeah, sorry, next time I’ll ask him to juice me up with some mystery shit while he’s ripping my tooth out.” He growled bitterly, knowing he was too weak and tired to be physically threatening. “Fuckin’ leaches.”

At least Brock looked relieved by it. But only partially. 

“He ripped out your tooth?” Brock asked later, as the two of them sat together, nothing but the quiet thrum of the engines in the wake of their meager conversation. 

“Yeah, back one.” Jack said quietly. Brock grimaced, facing forward. Neither of them spoke for the rest of the ride but at some point, Brock had slipped his hand over Jack’s and Jack held on to it. 

They didn’t do things like that often, usually saving any form of physical affection for behind closed doors, lest they be seen as unprofessional or soft. But after spending so much time away, after going through what he had, Jack didn’t mind it. 

Even during their ride, Jack didn’t sleep. Much to his dismay, he was landed at a hospital and hooked up to IVs again, just like he was at the embassy. He understood why but that didn’t mean he had to like it. 

For another forty eight hours, after a plethora of x-rays, a myriad of tests, and a painstaking hour of having the jerry rigged stitches he’d been given redone, Jack was finally allowed to go home. The drive was silent, the atmosphere heavy and suffocating. Jack didn’t like it but he didn’t have the strength to start a dialogue. Whatever it was Brock had to say about what had happened, he didn’t want to hear it and he’d put it off for as long as he could, even if he knew that wouldn’t be much longer. 

Once he got home, the first thing he did was take a shower. A real, proper shower. He spent most of it clearing his head, coaxing the throb that had settled behind his eyes to leave him, and letting the tension slip away from his body. Everything had hurt for so long and the heat was his last hope to chase it away. So, he stayed in there until the water ran cold. Afterward, he brushed his teeth for far too long, well after his gums had started bleeding and, damn, never before had mouthwash felt so good, he almost didn’t want to spit it out. 

Jack only left the room after he was dressed, grateful to the fog in the mirror for hiding the unfortunate state his body had come to. He couldn’t remember a time since before he was a teenager that his arms looked so thin and he hated it, feeling disproportionate and ugl. But with the aid of the baggiest clothes he could find, he almost felt normal. 

When he got back out to the living room, his mind set on a glass of whiskey despite it hardly being noon, he saw Brock sitting on the floor in front of the couch, legs crossed in a way that reminded him of a child. Jack sat next to him in a similar fashion. 

“I looked for you. I tore that base apart looking for you,” Brock mumbled, staring down at his hands as he spoke. “I missed our drop, almost got Barkley killed. I  _ needed _ to find you, but I couldn’t and I’m sorry, Jack.” 

Everything he was hearing sounded wrong to him. Sounded like a confession, like Brock was trying to justify something that he didn’t need to and Jack shook his head while he fretted with the tattered edge of the old, black hoodie’s sleeve. 

“You didn’t do anything wrong.” Was all he said, which was apparently enough to get Brock to look up at him. Jack didn’t have to look back to see the vexation in his gaze, he could already feel it. 

“Fuck you,” He coughed out, the sound of his broken voice enough to raise Jack’s stare. “Fuck you I didn’t do anything wrong, I did everything wrong. What I did, what I said-”

“It doesn’t matter.” Jack interjected, taking a second to find his words before he sighed, pulling Brock’s left hand into his lap with both of his own, brushing his thumb over the warm metal of the ring there. “We both fucked up. Should’ve handled things better than we did, could’ve done things differently.  _ Would’ve  _ if we knew what was gonna happen. But we didn’t and it’s done and I need you to just… forget about it. Because  _ I _ want to forget about it but I can’t do that if you won’t too, so please jus- just don’t make me think about it all the time. Please?” 

A part of him felt wrong for it, knew that things were hard on Brock too. They needed to talk about it, Brock deserved to know, but that was the thing: Jack didn’t want him to. Every part of him knew that Brock was tearing himself to pieces over what happened and that nothing he said would take the guilt or the anger that his husband felt for himself away. He didn’t want to add to it and that meant Brock couldn’t know exactly what went on those few weeks in that awful room. 

Despite his clear uncertainty, Brock acquiesced. The two of them would help each other move on from it and he wouldn’t ask about what happened. And for the first time since he’d been picked up, Jack felt like he could relax. They could work through it together and Jack could start to forget. 

But forgetting didn’t come as easy as he was hoping it would, a reality that hit him achingly hard that very night. 

Whatever time it was was beyond him. The two of them had a light dinner and went to bed early. Brock still had to work, Jack was exhausted from the very few hours of sleep he’d gotten since that morning he woke up in the mountains, and the two of them desperately wanted to curl up together like a couple of house cats in the afternoon sun. 

Jack’s sleep hit him fast and hard, a combination of physical and emotional exhaustion as well as prescription narcotics knocking him out quicker than a wolf could pounce on a limping hare. One would think that he’d be out like a light until well into the morning but it seemed one would be wrong. Because at some point, Brock had untangled himself from their bed and opened the door which sounded off a quiet  _ click _ . 

As soft as it may have been, it rang like as loud as a church bell in Jack’s ear and he bolted upright, slamming his back into the headboard while he stared wide eyed ahead of him. It was the shape of Brock’s silhouette that snapped him out of it after he was unable to match it with either of the Sokovian brothers and once he’d realized where he was and what was going on, he cursed his own anxiety. 

“Are you okay?” Brock asked. Jack couldn’t see his face but he knew the tone well enough to picture it. The way his brow would furrow and his eyes would reflect concern in a way that made Jack feel pitiful. He’d seen and heard it all too much in the past couple of days. 

“I’m fine,” was all he said as he readjusted himself, laying back onto their mattress that, now that he was awake, felt all too soft to him. He stared at the ceiling, restless and jittery, for what felt like an eternity and more, waiting for Brock to get back. When he finally did, Jack pulled him close and found a spot for himself on his husband’s chest.

And he found that it was a lot easier to fall asleep to the steady rhythm of Brock’s heart. 

✩

“Twelve weeks.” Brock said, looking down to him with ire in that hazel stare. He was standing over Jack, who’d taken up space on the living room floor to indulge in the morning workout routine he used to wake up to. “Doctors have you on a  _ twelve  _ week medical leave, not  _ two _ .” 

“I’m not working, Brock.” Jack sighed, picking up the water bottle that sat beside him. It was nine in the morning and usually Brock would be at work by then. But it wasn’t a weekday and Jack was becoming all too aware of how fucked up his sense of time had become. 

“You’re gonna hurt yourself again if you keep goin’ too fast.” There was genuine worry in his voice and Jack sighed out a little grumble as he leaned against the couch, resting his head on the seat and staring at the ceiling. He ran his thumb over the seal of the water bottle and despite literally seeing that it’d never been touched, he couldn’t help but still feel uneasy about it. It made him feel stupid. 

“I can’t,” Another sigh fell from him as he sat up and looked up at Brock properly. “I can’t keep sittin’ around all day in my boxers watching The Office and eatin’ party pizzas. I’m gonna get fat.” 

It was a relief that his attempt to lighten the mood was successful and Brock scoffed out a chuckle. He sat town on the couch, his leg pressing against Jack’s arm in a way that made Jack feel grounded. His mind had been wandering so much lately, sometimes it was hard to figure out what was actually real and what was a daydream. 

“ _ You _ are not gonna get fat.” Brock said, curling his fingers around Jack’s hair and rustling through it a bit. “Looked like you hadn’t eaten in a month when you came back to me.” 

A strange mix of melancholy and teasing was sifting in his voice, like he was trying to make light of the situation for Jack’s sake despite it still weighing a heavy burden on his shoulders. Unfortunately, Jack couldn’t reciprocate the way he knew Brock needed him too. The reality of it was still echoing in Jack’s head, filling his mind up with memories that were too stubborn to be washed away, no matter how many bottles he was downing in while trying to. 

Brock picked up on it. Ever since Jack had gotten back, Brock had gotten much more sensitive to his mood, able to pick up a shift before Jack even realized it happened. Silently, he slid off of the couch, sitting on the floor with his hand laid very carefully over Jack’s shoulder. 

“Did you?” Was all he asked and Jack didn’t try to hide the way his features pulled together in a grimace. When Brock ducked down to catch his eyes, Jack knew he was done for. It was the very reason he didn’t want to talk about in the first place because he knew looking into those deep hazel eyes, that he just couldn’t lie to Brock. Couldn’t fill his head with a sugar coated, fabricated synopsis of his time spent locked away in the basement of that unknown Sokovian facility. 

“I couldn’t force myself to eat the dog food.” Jack mumbled out, his voice so quiet that a strong breeze likely would’ve carried his words away. But no such luck, Brock heard it with clarity and looked at him for long, miserable seconds before he turned his somber stare away. Jack’s eyes went back to the water bottle in his hands and for what felt like the millionth time, he checked the seal that remained unbroken. 

Abruptly, Brock stood up, muttering to Jack that he’d be right back, before heading into the kitchen to make a phone call that Jack was all too jaded to listen in on. He stared at the bottle, uneasy with the idea of drinking it despite knowing there was no way anything had compromised the contents. Still, he was only satisfied when he actually opened it, the affirming crack of the seal breaking calming his nerves. 

“Come on, let’s go.” Was all Brock said when he came back into the room and Jack gave him a worried look. Still, he took the offered hand and stood up, a bit unnerved with how easily Brock was able to pull him to his feet. It’d never been a particular struggle and maybe he was a little hyper sensitive to how much weight he was lacking, but it felt weird nonetheless.

  
  


“That greasy, nasty ass Mexican food truck you like so much is open for the season. And we’re gonna go.” Brock declared, tossing a hoodie on and fussing with his hair momentarily before heading out the door without another word. There was irony to it, seeing as Jack had  _ just been _ worrying over his poor diet, but he didn’t care because the idea of shoving a chipotle chicken quesadilla down his throat was all too enticing. 

A part of him knew the offer was only made because Brock felt guilty and wanted a way to alleviate it. Just something to feel better but Jack didn’t mind because it made him feel better too. 

Eventually, the two of them were able to move on with their day and go back to normal and Jack held out hope that they could go another few weeks without something else being brought up. But hope had never done much for him, anyway. 

Only three days later, the pair had to go out again. 

“We need groceries,” Brock sighed, tossing out a mostly spoiled pack of spinach that neither of them had eaten fast enough. “Especially if we wanna bulk you back up.” 

Reluctant at first, Brock had given into letting Jack workout under the condition that he would eat carb heavy meals to put more weight on him in hopes he’d be able to get back to his regular size. Being so underweight left him tired and saturnine, more so than he ever was before. They both knew he’d need to be back to his normal self —well… physically, at least— by the time his medical leave was up. They had ten weeks to do that but Jack was anxious to get started anyway, unable to stand sitting around any longer. He started pacing again and he didn’t like the headspace that put him into. 

Jack was excited to go to the store, a feeling he recalled from his childhood but no later than that. It wasn’t so much the trip itself that was riveting for him, the novelty of Walmart had never been particularly charming, as much as it was the yearn to feel normal. Shoving a shopping cart around while Brock tried to decide what dinners they would have throughout the week on the spot was just one of those domestic things that he never really knew he missed until he was reveling in the normalcy of it. 

During their shenanigans at the store, a particular bag of coffee beans caught his attention while Brock was deciding whether he wanted to buy everything bagels or just make them at home since he’d figured out how to. It was a product he’d been interested in and passed up several times before because there was really no reason for him to spend almost $30 on coffee beans but then again, he  _ did _ almost die so maybe he could have expensive coffee. As a treat. 

The decision was finalized when Brock came back with a package of bagels and pulled the bag Jack had been staring at from the shelf to toss it in the cart along with his own find. Neither of them said anything about it, Brock merely spouting off on how he didn’t have time in the morning to make bagels and maybe on the weekend he’d do something special. 

Overall, they ended up with probably more food than they needed but neither of them cared enough to put anything back. They had been venturing toward the checkout when Brock got distracted talking to someone he recognized. Jack had probably met them a time or two and just never bothered to remember them. Instead of engaging, he let himself browse a small wall of sunglasses while pondering whether or not he should waste the $20. The sunlight had been particularly difficult to deal with lately, something he didn’t want to think too hard about. 

Eventually, he gave into the impulse and tossed the mirrored aviators in just before Brock ended his conversation. Buying trivial things was a small comfort, one that gave him a rush of immediate satisfaction that he was sure would be snuffed out later. Over all they spent entirely too much for Jack’s taste but he let it go. They weren’t hurting for cash and a couple hundred bucks on things they mostly needed would go to good use.

After getting all packed up, Brock had made a comment about how they needed to stop for gas and Jack acknowledged him. There was a guilty look on his face, one that almost sifted into reluctance and Jack had a feeling he knew why but didn’t press the issue. There were some things that didn’t need to be argued over.

“I’m gonna head in, get a pack of smokes. Fill the tank?” He asked and Jack nodded an easy  _ ‘sure’ _ at the request without a second thought. 

Something so routine that he didn’t even spare a second glance at it. It was something he could do on autopilot; swipe the card, punch in the pin, shove the nozzle into the gas tank, and hit the far left button. That was it. Simple, easy, unassuming. So much so that he was able to lean against the car and scroll through Twitter just like any normal person would because the action was so innocent and so mundane that no one else thought twice when doing it so neither did Jack. Until he smelled the gas. 

A rush went through his head that immediately saturated a stinging in his eyes. A part of him wanted to convince himself that none of it was real, even after his burning throat threatened to spit up welling blood that wasn’t actually there. After a solid minute of dry heaving, the contents of Jack’s stomach splattered across the concrete just behind their car and he thanked the heavens he was at the furthest pump, able to shield himself from the rest of the gas station’s inhabitants. But that didn’t shield him from Brock, who all but vaulted over the hood of the car to be by his side. Jack couldn’t force his trembling body to move, his left hand tight as a vice on Brock’s forearm while his right stayed clasped firmly over his mouth. 

“What happened, Jackie? Talk to me,” Brock borderline begged but Jack merely shook his head. Ushering Jack into the car, Brock handed him a jacket from the back seat to clean himself up with and Jack was thankful he managed to keep himself from vomiting on his clothes. He returned not too long later with a water bottle and the two of them left without finishing filling up the tank. Jack didn’t look Brock in the eye on their way home and feeling his partner’s troubled gaze boring into the back of his head wasn’t much of an incentive to ease any of the concern. 

It only got worse when they got home. After they finished putting their groceries away in a tense silence, Jack was left sitting on the floor in front of the couch the way he’d taken to while Brock was standing in the threshold where their kitchen bled into the living room. He was nearly vibrating with the amount of anxious energy he was resonating, pinning Jack with a stare that for some reason, made him feel guilty about it even though he was pretty sure it wasn’t supposed to. 

“I’m sorry-” 

“What happened?” Brock asked, not acknowledging the pathetic whimper that escaped Jack, so odd to him that he hardly recognized it as his own voice. He tried to keep his gaze lowered, tried to shrug it off but that wasn’t an option and that became all too clear when Brock crouched in front of him and forced him to look up with tired eyes. “Tell me.” 

A part of him wanted to be irritated, wanted to tell Brock to fuck off and that it was fine, make up some bullshit about not feeling good but he just couldn’t bring himself to. So he explained everything about the day Ilya poured gasoline down his throat just to shove him to the ground and halfway drown him. Brock was silent through it. 

“I could  _ feel _ my throat fill up with blood from the inside,” His voice shook with the force of a rampant hurricane and he had to physically shake his head to keep himself from bursting at the seams. It hurt that Brock didn’t say anything.  _ He  _ was the one who  _ wanted _ this. To hear Jack say it and relive the awful memories that already did enough to torment him without being released to the world via spoken word. For Brock to be so quiet afterward made it feel like it was all for not, like the two of them suffered together for nothing and Jack wondered that if misery loved company then why did he feel so awful?

He didn’t wait much longer to get up from his spot. Brock had since gotten to his feet to retrieve himself some water and Jack took the opportunity to hide in their bedroom. Maybe it was selfish to ignore it, to offer little support or promises that he was okay but he respected Brock too much to blow smoke up his ass. So he wasted the rest of his day with restless sleep and dreams of a hell that was too much of a reality to write off as simple nightmares. 

✩

Three weeks had passed since the incident at the gas station. He hadn’t had any episodes since then, save for the anxiety attacks he had when waking up from particularly vivid dreams. He liked to think that they were growing more sparse, even if it was waking him up in the middle of most nights. 

It was the first day in the past few weeks that he really didn’t have anything to do. The snow on the ground had begun to melt with the rising temperatures and for what felt like the first time in his life, Jack was eager for things to start warming up again. He’d spent enough time in the cold and even if he ended up feeling like he would sweat to death, he was over waking up in a panic because of feeling the chill that snaked through his bones. 

On that particular day, he had the sudden impulse to take a run. Cabin fever had gotten such a tight hold over him that sometimes he felt like there was a full grown Burmese python slowly, but steadily, tightening around his throat. Nothing of note happened, everything was pretty tame, save for the barking of what sounded like a large dog about a street over that disquieted him enough to make sure he didn’t venture any closer. 

He’d underestimated how much warmer it was that day, dressing himself in a hoodie and subsequently coming home drenched in sweat and in dire need of a shower. It was just a little past three. He had two hours to get cleaned up and lurk through their cabinets to decide what sounded good to make the two of them for dinner. As much as he admired the sentiment that Brock meant when making dinner, he could only stand so many meals that tasted like they were drenched in butter and garlic. For someone who came from an Italian family, he didn’t seem to retain much of the cooking gene. 

All of that left him as an afterthought the exact second the hot water hit him. By that point he’d been back home longer than he ever was  _ there _ , but still, he reveled in it. Sometimes he took them for no reason other than simply craving the warmth and he wasted the hour working their water heater ragged. He spent the better part of it lost in his own head, nonsense thoughts keeping him occupied while he ran up their water bill. He got out feeling refreshed. The room was heavy with steam and over the weeks, Jack had gotten more confident when wiping the fog away from the mirror. Slowly but surely, his body was filling back out to what he’d been used to and even though he wasn’t quite there yet, he could see the progress and that was all he needed.

With nothing but a towel and a bold confidence, that had recently become unfamiliar, to shield him from the cool air that settled within the rest of the house, Jack left the bathroom just to come face to face with Brock, standing in their bedroom and pulling a jacket over his shoulders. It took Jack a minute to really understand why Brock was staring at him so intensely, the steam from his shower still hazy in his head. When he finally focused, he found that Brock wasn’t staring him in the eye, but at his chest and he understood. He guessed that over the weeks of having it there, he’d forgotten about his more recent tattoo. It had faded as it healed but not much, the black ink still prominent against his pale skin. 

Brock was quiet when he approached and for whatever reason, Jack felt like he had to remain deathly still. Like he was in the lair of a sleeping bear and even so much as breathing would sign his death warrant. 

Painfully slowly, Brock reached out to him, his cold fingers pressing against the mangled, jagged letters that spanned across his chest, tainting the pale expanse just below his sternum. The tattoo itself had healed poorly, the flesh there raised in a newly healed scar with blow out from ink dug in too deep. 

“Were you ever gonna tell me?” Brock asked, his voice low like he was meant to be keeping a secret. Jack shrugged his left shoulder, looking down at his partner and trying not to feel licentious for keeping it from him. 

“I didn’t know how to,” Jack admitted. Part of him knew it wasn’t feasible to keep such a thing away from Brock. They were married, they’d slept together since Jack had gotten back, he was just good at keeping Brock’s hands away from the wrong places. In all honesty, he was kind of surprised that he managed to keep it hidden as long as he had but he was smart enough to know that it was only a matter of time and that time had come. “I guess I just- I didn’t want you to see the way I changed. I just want to be normal for you.” 

A hand on the back of his neck pulled his head down and Jack found solace resting his chin over Brock’s shoulder. It was something the older man had taken a liking to, keeping a hand clasped around the nape of Jack’s neck. Something that the brothers had used as a way to control him, something that once stirred nausea in him, now turned into a source of warmth and content. He was grateful for it. 

“Sorry to be the one to tell you this but you were never really that normal in the first place,” Brock huffed, laughing as he did. Jack shared it with him, absent-mindedly nuzzling his face further into Brock’s neck as he spoke. “But I still love you. And it’s fine if you’re a little more fucked up this time around, I think ya got a right to be.” 

And that was that. No panic attacks, no embarrassment while feeling like he was going to cry, no flashbacks. Just a conversation between two people who understood each other in ways that some people could only dream of. Jack got dressed, pleased with how he was beginning to fill in his clothes. They made dinner together, Jack tried, just like he did all the other times, to teach Brock that there was more to making a meal than pepper and garlic and for probably the ten thousandth time since meeting him, Jack exasperatedly stated that  _ no, their food would not cook faster if they turned the oven up higher. _

Dinner was accented with a bottle of bourbon that had no business being as expensive as it was. And with half the bottle gone, the two of them slow danced together in their living room. The music from the radio turned up just enough for them to hear over the sounds of the city. 

✩

Choking on a laugh as he tripped Brock up for the second time that morning, Jack stumbled as well while Brock carried out a very swift revenge in the form of shoving him into the grass. The two of them had started taking morning runs together. It was a way for them to spend some more time with each other under the guise that they were getting Jack’s sleep schedule back in order seeing as the impending end to his medical absence was just four weeks away. Given his not-so-distant past, Jack probably should’ve been tentative at the very least but he wasn’t. He was excited. 

During the time he wasn’t at work, he found himself getting gradually more inattentive. He had this uncharacteristic difficulty paying attention to tasks, especially for longer periods of time. He found himself to be easily distracted and worst of all, he was always tired. No matter how much or little sleep he got, he was always so damn tired and had begun spending a lot of his free time cat napping around the house. Sometimes in their bed, sometimes on the couch, but mostly, he chose this little spot on the floor, beside a window where the sunlight kept him warm for the majority of the day. Brock had found him doing it before, oftentimes tossing a throw blanket over him and once, he even laid down beside him. But only once because he’d woken up feeling like he was just hit by a truck, flipping off Jack who teased him for being an old man. 

Needless to say, getting out for daily runs through the nearby neighborhood was a refreshing lapse in the dismal schedule he’d picked up— if it could even be called as much. Today, construction had forced a change in their usual route. While jogging down a road they’d yet to explore, Brock kept telling him about how boring work had been. Because of what happened, Pierce had Alpha on suspension from out of country work for another two months and Brock lamented that it was his fault, that his insistence on staying behind in Sokovia longer and tearing up that base infuriated the old man so much that he’d nearly called for Brock’s head. 

A morbid part of Jack wished he could’ve seen it and he wasn’t sure if he should feel guilty about that or not. Maybe it was because he’d spent so much time wondering if Brock had cared at all and he knew  _ that _ was something he should feel at least a little culpable for. 

Crashing chain link and gnashing teeth ripped him from his thoughts and their conversation with a force so great that it could’ve left him with whiplash. Clambering back and nearly falling on his ass in the process, Jack felt himself instinctively pull his arms up in defense despite the six foot fence that kept the dog at bay. 

Flashbacks of torn flesh and the stench of blood flashed through his mind in a migraine inducing haze all while Jack clenched his teeth, trying to force himself to think logically. This dog was nothing like the one he’d fought, their only resemblance in their black coats. Whatever he fought was a mongrel, a shepherd mix with a lanky build, long snout, and tall, pointed ears. The one before him was one of those bully breeds, its body strong and stout, sporting a boxy face and a huge head with ears cropped close to its skull. It paced along the fence line, barking at them and occasionally jumping up. Even the way it barked was different, it didn’t hold a candle to the amount of ferocity that  _ Jack’s dog _ had. But try as he might to rationalize it and force himself to calm down, he just couldn’t. None of it seemed to matter because while he stared into the dark eyes of the dog before him, he felt like the very place he was in melted around him and that dog’s eyes turned out to be the cold, icy blue ones of the mutt that tried to kill him. 

With his chest still tight and his fists balled like he had to be ready to fight, Jack tried to take a step forward. It was probably a good fifteen feet to the other side where he could leave the dog behind him, finish his run, have a  _ normal fucking day _ . But he couldn’t do it. Even inching toward it made his pulse spike impossibly faster and his knees lose their strength. Try as he might he just couldn’t force himself to walk in front of that damn dog. 

Finally, a choked, frustrated growl of his own left him and Jack turned around. Exasperated, he held his hands over the back of his neck, shaking his head while he backed up far enough for the neighboring yard’s privacy fence to block the view of the dog. It helped a little but he could still hear the barks and snarls. He wondered what was going through Brock’s head right now because he looked like a lost child, staring at Jack and begging for answers but only receiving the shake of Jack’s head as a response. 

Sparing one last glance at the dog, Brock closed the distance between them, pulling Jack in close. Jack knew the question was on the tip of Brock’s tongue, one he didn’t want to answer and wouldn’t if he could avoid it. So he stole the opportunity to speak. 

“Can we go home?” He asked and he saw Brock’s question die before he had the chance to say anything. Nodding with a quiet  _ ‘of course,’ _ the two of them made their way back to their house. The walk felt like a haze and at some point on the way there, Jack had bitten the inside of his cheek bloody. Once the initial shock settled, bitterness flared in its wake. Even long after they’d gotten home, after the doors were locked and Jack was sitting on the couch in what should’ve been the sanctity of his living room, his body refused to calm. His leg bounced with a quickness that seemed to shake the entire house and his trembling hands refused to settle unless he had something to fidget with. Even all that time later, he’d reflexively went to toy with his wedding band only to be met with a cruel reminder of the price he’d paid. 

After getting out of the shower, with a meager thirty minutes left until he needed to leave for work, Brock sat on the couch next to him. But not  _ next  _ to him, really. There was a barrier there, something meant to be a respectful distance that felt more like a disgusted absence. One part of him needed Brock to be closer but the other refused to bridge the gap, wishing to completely dissociate from the situation. Being both too stubborn and too scared to say anything, Jack stayed put and tried not to be hurt by it. 

“Tell me what happened?” Brock asked, an unnatural softness in his voice. Jack didn’t like it. It made him feel looked down on, pathetic, and infantilized, even. He felt like Brock saw him as a broken doll that needed to be handled with care and it was something he’d grown more than tired of feeling.

“You promised you wouldn’t make me think about it.” Jack hissed, his voice dangerous. He didn’t want to talk about this, not right now. Dealing with the dog had been punishment enough. He knew Brock couldn’t read his mind but he knew the bastard could tell when he was on edge and yet, he kept pushing it. 

“I know but how am I supposed to keep a promise that’s hurting you?” He asked and Jack scoffed, rolling his eyes before he turned his head to the side. “We can’t keep avoiding it, this shit’ll just get worse. I can’t help you work through this if you don’t  _ talk _ to me.” 

There was a note of pleading in Brock’s voice that he knew he should sympathize with, knew he should feel guilty for because he was the one that put it there but at that point, he felt like he was backed into a corner. Maybe even backed into the corner of a dark room with gravel floors and a steel door with three locks. 

“What do you want?” Jack spat, defensively, getting up to leave Brock at his back. “You wanna hear about how he had fun digging a cattle prod into my back while he left the door open? Or maybe about how he dumped five gallons of fucking cow blood on me while it was still warm? Oh, wait, is it the dog? You wanna know about the dog that he locked in that room with me and how much it hurt when that fucking  _ mutt’s _ teeth latched onto my arm a-and how terrified I was  _ every. Fucking. Time _ it tried to tear my throat out? I’m sure you’d love to hear about how I had to let it bite the shit out of my shoulder so I could snap its fucking neck just to get it over with! Let’s not forget how I sat there, in the dark, swearing to  _ God _ that I could hear the fuckin’ thing shifting around and growling and all I could do was sit there and wait for it to tear me to pieces. 

Is that what you wanted to hear?!” Jack felt like he was out of breath, his voice had broken so much throughout his tirade that he could literally hear the tears getting closer to falling and all it took was one, little hiccup for it all to come to a head. 

Brock didn’t waste time getting up, pulling Jack’s head down with his hand slotting on Jack’s nape like a puzzle piece, bringing the comfort that Jack was desperately trying to bring himself earlier that morning. Hot, angry tears soaked into the fabric of Brock’s shirt collar as Jack’s hands gripped the back of it with so much force that he was confident he could tear the material beneath his fingertips. He was angry. Angry and scared and lost and humiliated. Being angry was bad enough but crying was worse. Crying left him feeling vulnerable and weak, like he was a little kid again, that didn’t know up from down. 

“I’m sorry,” He mumbled, the remorse from snapping at Brock only aiding in his distress. 

“Shut up.” Brock sighed, nestling his cheek against Jack’s. The two of them stood there way longer than they should’ve and Brock was wasting the time he could’ve spent getting ready to leave. A selfish piece of Jack reveled in the attention and was more than happy to stay there like that as long as Brock was willing to cater to his comfort, indulging in it for the little amount of time that they had left before they’d spend the next nine or so hours away from each other. 

“Promise me you won’t apologize for this shit anymore, understand?” Brock said, the stern cadence in his voice overruled by the softness of his touch. “Cause it’s not your fault.” 

Those words were shaky, the tail end of them breaking and Jack’s body tensed around Brock. But he agreed. 

Not long after that, Brock left him with nothing but the ghost of a sorrowful kiss and Jack tried to figure out what to do with himself when he was gone. There was still an entire day ahead of him, one full of things for him to do. He could go do some yard work, clean up the back yard like he’d promised to do a hundred times or more before the Sokovia mission. He could go get the parts he needed for his bike and work on the engine like he’d been meaning to for the better part of the last year. Hell, he was sure there were some things they needed from the grocery store. 

But none of that mattered, it was all a bust and for the first time since his trouble with the gasoline, he slept his day away. 

✩

Nothing in the immediate past had made him feel more content than he did that cool, late winter’s morning when tossing the car door closed in the parking lot of the Triskelion. Scanning the building, Jack sighed through his nose, wondering how he could miss the damn thing so much. A version of him from four months ago would’ve wanted any excuse to ditch work for twelve weeks, to have his days and what felt like endless time to himself. Jack had always thought himself an introvert, never really favoring being around people much, but after so long of spending most of his days in near solitude, not to mention the three weeks prior to his return, he felt almost excited to come back to work. The feeling was something akin to what a kid felt when they opened their eyes on Christmas morning. 

Throughout his leave, he hadn’t seen any of the team. Part of him didn’t want to, didn’t need them seeing him the way he was; a broken deer left to die on the road. It was his pride, really. A lot of his confidence had been ripped out from underneath him, something he hadn’t even noticed until he got home from Sokovia and had the luxury of it being one of his primary concerns. But it’d been a full three months and quite a few weeks since he’d filled back out into the lean standard he was used to. That helped, knowing that he at least looked normal again, the only big distinguisher being the scar that curled over his chin but he decided it could’ve been worse.

Stepping inside, he was relieved not to be greeted with a scene. He knew how the team had reacted after Lomack was out for a week and a half because of a GSW and if he had to deal with anything even remotely similar, he would’ve lost his mind. But he was able to come in, toss his gear in the locker there, and meet back with Brock- who most certainly didn’t threaten anyone to get them to leave Jack alone, absolutely not- to discuss their plans for the day. 

“We’re runnin’ drills, like always. First Tuesday of the month.” Brock reminded him and Jack nodded. It would be easier to keep track of the days now that he had to. “But before that, Pierce wants to see you.”

The way Brock said it was low and when Jack looked back up to him the man looked as though he felt like a harbinger of Jack’s immediate downfall. Talking to Pierce was never, in any context, enjoyable. Whether it be congratulations for a job well done or admonishing their failure, Jack didn’t see the difference. The room always filled with a strict tension, one that was expected when facing the man who held his life in a birdcage, just waiting to send in a hungry kestrel to devour him whole. 

“Okay, I’ll meet you back here.” Was all he replied with, staring into Brock’s tense gaze. Neither of them liked dealing with the man in general, let alone on their own. But it had to be done and when it was, the two of them were burdened with a grim reminder that there would be times where they couldn’t protect each other. 

Jack was keyed up the entire walk through the building and all through the elevator ride until he heard the tell-tale  _ ding _ that would usually have his stomach dropping like the lift had fallen out from beneath his feet. But this time, when the doors opened, all of the tension in him seemed wilt into apathy. He sat, waiting around for Pierce to finish whatever it was he was doing in his office, comfortably numb and detached from a situation he should be much more apprehensive about. His thoughts drifted, most of them trivial and forgotten as quickly as the next forced itself into the forefront of his mind. The pattern continued until he heard a lock click. A new panic in him arose at the sound of an opening door but once he saw it was Pierce, oddly enough, his worry faded back into indifference. 

Ilya wasn’t wrong in his arrogant declaration that Jack would always be terrified of him, something that couldn’t have been made any clearer by the irrefutable fact that he just wasn’t afraid of Pierce anymore. Maybe it was because he wasn’t afraid of dying, since dying seemed a helluva lot better than what he went through and what he was still picking up the pieces from. 

“Agent Rollins, please, come have a seat.” Pierce offered, using that same plastic inflection that always grated on Jack’s nerves. It was obnoxious, really, how hard this man worked to keep up the appearance of a “clean, cordial politician.” The same kind that no one would be naïve

enough to actually believe. Nevertheless, he followed instruction and entered the room, finding himself a little uneasy at the repeated sound of the lock sliding shut. Jack didn’t miss how exhausting the role of a double agent was, constantly smiling in the face of the very people he was stabbing in the back. Figuratively, of course, Jack rarely smiled in public. 

“It was very regrettable to hear about your plight, deplorable really,” Pierce started as he sat down, picking up and re-aligning a stack of papers just to set them to the side to have a place to rest his now folded hands. “I’m sure I speak for everyone on your team when I say it’s good to have you back.” 

“Good to be back.” The flat timbre of his voice contradicted his words and Pierce smiled stifly at him. 

“No need to sound so morose, I’m not firing you here.” A tight, fake laugh left the old man. “But I do expect the same quality I’ve come to know from you.”

“Absolutely, of course. Setback’s over with.” Another clipped response, this time earning him the slight twitch of Pierce’s brow. 

“Good to hear. I need both you and Commander Rumlow to understand that mistakes like this will not happen again. Your husband caused me a lot of problems while you were off lazing about in Sokovia.” This time, it was Jack’s turn to be agitated, rendered obvious when his nose creased as his brows drew together defensively. There’s a malicious bite in Pierce’s voice that told him he’s getting close to stepping over the line. “I’m not very fond of having my agents breach clearance and make requests to Fury about taking our quinjets halfway around the world.” 

Startled, Jack’s expression loosened and all he could do was nod, something that seemed to please the politician before him. 

“Good,” He purred in a way that made Jack’s skin crawl, a tone not too unlike a creepy uncle. “You and Rumlow have been valuable operatives to me for many years, I’d hate to see another hiccup like this result in your contracts being terminated.” 

There it was, the threat of death. Jack wasn’t so scared of it now, not for himself at least. For Brock was an entirely different story.

“Won’t happen again, sir.” Jack rumbled, physically forcing himself not to grit his teeth as he spoke, a grimace finding its way in place of a fake smile that should’ve mimicked Pierces’.

“Wonderful. I’ll let you get back to whatever it was you were doing.” Pierce chimed with a curt nod.  _ ‘Fuck you, too. _ ’ Jack thought as he returned the favor and left the room feeling much more frustrated than he’d been beforehand. Pierce just had that kind of effect on people, something he knew well, so he tried to brush it off. 

It wasn’t just Pierce, though, and he knew his newly soured mood had something to do with Brock as well. Staying true to his word, he walked back through the building, his pace quickening as his anxiety spiked. When he finally got there, he tried to be nonchalant about it, opening the door and closing it suspiciously softly. When he turned around, Brock had frozen with all the grace of a teenager trying to figure out which screw up his ass was about to be chewed for this time. 

“You breached clearance?” Jack growled out, the false fortitude he’d played into on his walk over being all but tossed into the bonfire. 

“I asked for a favor.” Brock corrected, chucking out a nervous laugh like he couldn’t find any excuses that sounded better. 

“Pierce is pissed.” Jack huffed. 

“Yeah.” 

“He wants to  _ kill _ us.” 

“Yep, he does.” 

Staring into each other’s eyes for a long, drawn out and suffocating breath, the two of them broke into laughter at the same time. A rare show of emotion outside of the privacy of their home, traded for the seclusion of Brock’s office. Maybe it was hysteria, maybe the two of them had finally been plagued with an integral delirium that’d festered over their weeks of near-normalcy. Their faux perfect life filled with cracks. But between those cracks of hurt and anger there was gold that they’d created on their own and they reaped the profits in the form of content and comfort between themselves. 

“It was worth it, though. Gettin’ you back.” Brock said as their laughter settled and Jack rolled his eyes. 

“Save it. You would’ve had a piece of Rogers' ass if I never turned up again, I had to come back. Think I’d let myself get upstaged by that idiot?” Jack asked and Brock grinned, fox-like and playful. Jack’s favorite smile. 

✩

Having a job like his was hard when you hated the heat and the cold. Both of them yielding bad memories that you had to ignore while carrying out life threatening tasks and hoping you didn’t piss off your superior. Lucky for him, he was in pretty good with his boss. 

Even with the weather, Jack missed this. He thought he’d be a bit more ambivalent when going on his first mission since Sokovia but he wasn’t. He was excited, not unlike the way he’d been when he first started working for S.H.I.E.L.D, before he knew what he’d actually signed up for. 

The moon was high that night, a waning crescent gifting them with less light and more cover. A better advantage. Undeterred by the lack of sun, however, the heat stuck to their bodies as they’d ventured closer to their destination. 

S.H.I.E.L.D had sent them out this time, leaving the team directly under Fury’s orders which meant they had to keep up their act around the Director’s favorite guard dog. Enervative but manageable. Rogers never asked many questions, able to keep up a casual mood even if things should strike him as odd but in Jack’s eyes, that made him dangerous. He was always watching and reading between the lines to see if he could catch people lying to him, and he was damn good at it. The first time he’d called Brock’s bullshit was a sight to see and the aftermath left Jack run ragged. 

Rogers aside, it was a pretty cut and dry retrieval mission and the government lab they were meant to infiltrate looked standard, nothing they hadn’t broken the door down to before. The scientists in this country, of which Jack hadn’t bothered to remember the name of, had been dabbling in bio-weaponry and naturally, Fury wasn’t very pleased. It was their job to grab the damn thing and take it back so the techs at S.H.I.E.L.D could reproduce it, test it, or do whatever else they had to to learn how to combat, or better yet neutralize it in the event that it was re-engineered and deployed. 

Only five of them went in, leaving Barkley and Keller behind at their base of operations. Seeing as Ellison always tended to linger to keep an eye on the cameras, he didn’t count. Rogers did what he always did when he accompanied on missions; overstepped his bounds, spoke over Brock, and made decisions he didn’t have the right nor the  _ experience _ to be making. A lot had changed since the 40s and the bastard really needed to learn that. When he first started going on missions with Alpha, he’d dance around it, idly wait until an opportunity arose to make suggestions that Brock usually batted away in favor of something he liked more. Maybe the guy just got tired of not being listened to, something one had to get used to when working with Brock Rumlow. 

He led them through the facility, nearly getting them caught not once but twice, before Brock said something about it. 

“I’ve been doin’ this shit for 15 years, Rogers. Let the professionals work, yeah?” He said, his tone condescending. Jack didn’t hide his smirk when he saw Rogers’ brow quirk. But he backed off and let Brock guide them, just as he’d been doing since he’d been made a STRIKE team commander. After that, they were able to come up on exactly what they were looking for. It didn’t look like much, a little vial sitting in a big glass display, but Jack knew that, if broken, it would taint the surrounding area for decades. 

They put it in a padded case, one that Rogers insisted on “being responsible” for. Jack rolled his eyes. It would be a cold day in hell whenever good old Captain America gave up the whole righteous act. The guy was down right insufferable at times because of it, which was why Jack tried to avoid him. He didn’t like talking to people in the first place but Rogers? The guy was a head case in his opinion. 

All was going relatively well until a fire alarm started sounding, one that Jack tried to push out of his mind. It was a feat that was beginning to feel increasingly impossible.The sound made his stomach churn, cropping up memories from the days where a siren not unlike it was present in his everyday life, and it antagonized him like an orca batting around a leopard seal. 

Soon after hearing it, the group discovered it was because of a fire. None of them knew what caused it, only knowing that their planned exit had been blocked off by raging flames that sent wispy embers to dance through the air around them while they concerned themselves with escape. Brock took charge, commanding them through the building with the ease of someone who’d worked there for years when in reality, he’d spent the better half of the last two weeks memorizing the floor plan of the building. He always did that on infiltration missions, knowing that if he couldn’t guide his team then he was all but useless to them. And he’d never let himself be useless. 

Their key to the outside came to them in the form of a door that they were only able to access by breaking into some poor sap’s office, who had been busying himself with saving a folder full of documents. Jack extinguished him on Brock’s command, his lack of hesitation getting Rogers to clench his teeth, something that satisfied him in a way he couldn’t explain. No one could know that they were there, the disappearance of the target needed to be a complete mystery lest they start trouble between the relations of the U.S. and all of them knew that. 

Opening up the door to find themselves fenced in around the back of the building, the team greeted face to face with a 10 foot behemoth of a fence. Lined with razor wire, three rolls thick and sharp enough to gut a man, that glimmered fiercely beneath the minimal light of the moon. All of them seemed to look to Brock immediately. 

“Wire cutters?” Rogers offered and Brock mauled it over quickly, his worries shown through the shake of his head that was accented by a heavy, troubled sigh. 

“The handhelds I got on me won’t make it through the fence. Too thick. Big one’s in the truck which means we’re goin over. I can cut  _ that. _ ” He said, pointing to the nest of razors above them. Jack felt his heart seize up a bit at the idea but it sounded better than sitting there and waiting for the fire or the cops to get them. Brock patted him on the back and with that, Jack crouched down enough for the commander to climb onto his shoulders. With a quick huff, he stood up, albeit a little shakily. 

“Come on, old boy, legs givin’ out on ya already?” Brock teased, earning himself a pinch to the thigh that had him jerking a bit and nearly toppling the pair over. It was almost a talent, really, the way the two of them could goof off even with the threat of capture —or at worse times, death— snapping at their heels. But they did it, often even. 

Brock made quick work of the wire, cutting it between two of the posts that secured the section with the idea of knotting them back in place after everyone was across. Once the sections were delicately pulled apart, Steve carefully kept ahold of one end while Brock got down and Jack took the other. Their three teammates got over the wall fine and Decker and Reed pulled the wire back on the other side. Jack stepped back, allowing Rogers to head over much to the chagrin of the blonde man who’d tried to get Jack to take his place. He was sure it was because of that damn martyr complex of his but Jack, in all honesty, was just putting it off. Eventually, he found himself curling his fingers through the chain link and pulling himself up and over. 

Everything would’ve been fine if Decker hadn’t slipped. Jack wasn’t sure what caused it, but he saw the man fall from his peripheral just as his hand was about to come off of the top of the fence and without warning, the wire wrapped around his wrist. The teeth of the razors bit into his skin with all of the ferocity of a hot knife and shredding through his tact glove like the protective material was flimsy paper. A hitched yelp, one coaxed out of him by the shock of the impact, drew out of his throat as he slipped from the fence, his feet landing on the loose earth below that tripped him up, leaving him to cling to the fence with his left hand while desperately trying not to worsen the damage that’d already been made from the force of his fall. Biting down on his tongue while he listened to Brock curse, Jack felt the blood well up and slide down his arm in a revolting similarity to the barbed wire that’d since left a collection of knotted scars that riddled his forearms. Oddly enough, Jack felt lucky it was just his wrist, because this shit was so much worse than the barbed wire. And he guessed that was the point. 

Somehow, even as he was cutting the wire that trapped Jack in place, Rogers was still annoying him. It was probably from a combination of the pain and Jack’s preconceived distaste of the man. That whole “noble” routine never failed to piss him off. Only when he felt the wires give, releasing him from their bear trap hold, did he breathe again. That first yelp was embarrassing enough as it was and holding his breath felt like the only way to keep any others buried. 

Jack wrapped the wound the best he could with a torn piece of his own shirt but his blood still dripped through his fingers. Brock had radioed Keller to let him know what’d happened and Jack had never felt so blessed to be greeted with bandages and saline. The rest of his night consisted of Decker’s continuous apologies and Brock being attached to his hip, the latter of which he really didn’t mind. Neither of them had managed to completely calm down even when they finally got back home a good six hours later. 

Sunlight filtered in through the blinds when Jack got out of the shower, in nothing but a pair of sweatpants that rested low on his hips. Brock had been brooding, sitting in their bed, his still damp hair sticking to his face as he glared so hard out the window that Jack was almost surprised that the glass didn’t shatter. 

“Brock,” Jack sighed, sliding into bed. “I’m not gonna break over a few cuts.” 

“A few cuts? That shit could’ve taken your hand off!” Brock barked out, turning to him with a grimace that Jack knew didn’t fit him. 

“But it didn’t, I’m fine.” He tried, only for Brock to slam his fists into Jack’s chest in a way that Jack knew was meant to be intimidating but just ended up feeling weak in a way that was uncomfortable. Brock wasn’t a weak man, quite the opposite really. This kind of display, though becoming a bit more common in the weeks since Jack’s return, was still new and frightening. Because if Brock was weak, then what was he? Well, little more than a mouse, he supposed. 

“It isn’t  _ fine _ , Jack. Don’t you think you’ve hurt enough?” Brock asked, letting his head fall over where his hands laid. He looked so tired, so torn to pieces about what had happened in ways more intense than Jack, himself, was. The trauma was still there, the pain about what happened lingering near fresh in his mind, and at times it felt impossible to get up and force himself through the day. There were still mornings he decided that he couldn’t function and would waste the hours laying in bed even if he wasn’t sleeping. But in that time, he was able to think about things more critically, about all of the people with a job like theirs who were doomed to similar fates and didn’t come out of it so lucky, so nearly unscathed as Jack had. Pulling the two of them down to lay on their sides, Jack made some distance, pulling Brock’s left hand into his bandaged right one and clasping their fingers together. 

“I think I’ve hurt a lot. And that I will again going forward but, it’s easier for me to hurt when you’re around,” He spoke just above a whisper, his words meant for Brock only. The expression on Brock’s face had since softened, staring at their connected hands in diluted agony. “So just promise me you’ll take care of me when it happens again.” 

There was a silence between them for a while but it was comfortable. It was a silence that Jack could fall asleep to if he wasn’t so lost in staring at the man before him. Every part of Brock was beautiful to him, seeing him so worried pained him more than anything he’d been through but Jack wouldn’t lie to him, wouldn’t sugar coat things or make promises he couldn’t keep. And Brock wouldn’t either, which made his response so much more satisfying. 

“I promise.”

That’s all it took for Jack to feel at ease. Through thick and thin, they were always together and even if it wasn’t physical, their spirits were always there. Jack thought that was something special, something that he’d never be able to replicate with anyone else, and he cherished it more than his own life. The kiss Jack leaned into was gentle, unlike the ones they usually shared that started as smug challenges only to devolve into gnashing teeth. But not this one. What they had here, laying in bed while the sun tried desperately to be seen through their blinds, was important. 

For the first time since he’d gotten back, he saw value in his life again and all in that moment, all of the pain and all of the torment was worth it because he got to come back to this. Even if all of it was arbitrary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Tumblr Plug](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/dogbite-propaganda/)  
> Note: This fic is unbeta-ed, I promise to fix the mistakes I find
> 
> Whew, feels almost surreal to have this finished after having it sitting around for almost a year now. To think, the idea for it came way back when I was watching the Hostel movies haha feels so long ago after all of the shit this year's put us through. But I'm pretty happy with it, this is by far the longest work I've ever put out which might not seem like much but it's a lot to me. 
> 
> I really enjoyed it but now it's onto the next adventure :]

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr Plug](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/dogbite-propaganda/)  
> Note: This fic is unbeta-ed, I promise to fix the mistakes I find
> 
> This fic has been in my drafts since around last February but for whatever reason, I was absolutely determined to finish it this week so, I did it lol. I'm really proud of myself for getting through it all and I hope you guys enjoy it! I'll try to get chapter two proofread this week, that's where the more comforting and fluffy stuff comes along so if you're not into that, I tried to make sure this first chapter stand alone 
> 
> Anyways, thanks for giving it a read :]


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